"The
Tango is not a dance but an obsession. For the
tanguero, it is as much a part of life as eating and
sleeping. Erotic and passionate, haunting and melancholy,
it involves not only the body but also the soul..."
The
Argentine NORBERTO
ESBREZ ("El Pulpo")
has seventeen years of professional experience
as a dancer, tango teacher and choreographer.
He worked for the most important theaters
and show-places in Buenos Aires, such
as: Teatro San Martin, Teatro Astral,
Teatro Opera, Cafe Tortoni, El Viejo Almacen,
La Ventana, Casablanca and many others.
Norberto
is the third generation of "tangueros"
in his family. He carries eighty years
of tango tradition and history. His grandfather
and father were bandoneon players. Julio
Esbrez, Norberto´s father was among
the most talented and respected tango
musicians of his time.
For
almost two decades Norberto has devoted
himself to Dance and carefully researched
and developed a very personal technique
and style. His tango steps were first
practiced with Rock'n Roll and from there
comes this spontaneous, playful style.
His movements are done continuously, very
round and smooth. Complex sequences of
ganchos, sacadas and enganches are totally
improvised. The fluidity of his style
and his hability with the legs was perceived
in such way at the milongas of Buenos
Aires that he was given the nickname "El
Pulpo" (the octopus).
The
deep understanding of the legwork in tango
also made him known in Buenos aires and
all over the world as "The King of
Ganchos". Tireless studious, he is
constantly discovering and adding new
movements to the tango vocabulary such
as: enganches, enredadas, suspensión,
the ocho "loco", cruces con
cambio de peso and other figures that
he hasn´t named yet. Today he´s
considered the most creative of the tango
dancers.
Pulpo´s
obsession for the dance could be defined
like this according to his own words:
"The more one knows, more interesting
it becomes to acquire more knowledge,
since each element can be placed in more
complex parameters."
He
lived for 7 years in Brazil where he taught
throughout the country as a member of
the "Academia Argentina de Tango".
He first lived in Rio de Janeiro and then
moved to São Paulo, where he ran
his own dance studio and held a weekly
milonga. He organized twice a big tango
event there: Gran Salón de Tango
de São Paulo.
In
1999 with much success Norberto began
traveling to teach tango and give exhibitions
in the United States, France, Germany,
Italy, Holland and Russia with Luiza Paes.
Since then they have been based in Buenos
Aires traveling all over the world during
most of the year. They were part of the
teaching staff in the II, III and VI CITA
(International Congress of Argentine Tango,
in Buenos Aires), respectively 2000, 2001
and 2004. They were teachers at the Tango
Magia Festival, in Amsterdam (2000), Portland
Festival (1999, 2001, 2002) and have been
part of the Las Vegas Tango Festival teaching
staff since 2001.
In
Buenos Aires they have a teaching group
at La Catedral with a regular group of
native students and with students from
all over the world that come to learn
tango in Argentina. They have also filmed
a series of three instructional videos
with "Bridge to the Tango" which
is distributed through Internet.
LUIZA
PAES, his partner, has studied
music since she was age six. For many
years she has worked in musical education
and vocal technique. In 1998 she began
to study and dance tango with Norberto
in Sao Paulo. Tango became then, a new
form of musical _expression for her. She
started working as Norberto's assistant
at his classes in his studio in Sao Paulo.
Later on she became his partner. She traveled
to the United States, France, Holland,
Germany, Italy and Russia to teach tango
workshops with Norberto being also his
translator. Since then they have been
travelling all over the world teaching.
In March of 2000 Luiza taught with Norberto
at the II CITA (International Congress
of Argentine Tango) in Buenos Aires and
one of the classes at the Congress was
led by her with great success: "Musical
Interpretation". Luiza has been teaching
also a special class for women. She works
technique for all levels emphasizing the
leader and follower's role, improvisation
and the ability of adapting which is what
a tango dancer has to develop in order
to follow different styles.
