Angel Echeverria & Julie Friedgen
Angel Echeverria & Julie Friedgen, owners of The Tango Room Dance Center.
Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Angel Echeverria has been dancing tango for more than fifty years. He was taken under the wings of the master milongueros who taught out of love for the dance when tango was specific to the neighborhood clubs and local dance hall, before tango shows, before videos, before tango became a business. Angel's distinctive style carries all the hallmarks of the authentic tanguero... extraordinary musicality, a subtle lead and classic footwork. These qualities plus decades of dancing and performing experience make Angel an unparalleled teacher whose joy in teaching and love of the Tango infuse every class. Angel's approach to tango is to teach you to dance from the heart, to help you make a profound connection with the music and with your partner. He teaches the essential techniques that make steps and combinations seem effortless.
Angel and his partner, Julie offer classes that focus on bringing authenticity, precision and fluidity to your tango, as well as an emphasis on improvisation. And Angel happily shares his repertoire of tango stories.
Julie Friedgen is a former ballet and flamenco dancer who studied with Michael Brigante, one of the most well-known teachers in Los Angeles. Julie grew up listening to the music of Carlos Gardel and watching her parents' Argentine friends dance tango at parties. The music was always in her soul but it wasn't until over fifteen years ago that she began to study tango. Once she began, she knew she had discovered the dance for the rest of her life. She appreciates the importance of solid technique as the foundation upon which a dancer creates personal style and finds artistic expression. She brings boundless energy and enthusiasm to every class and loves the moment when a student's eyes light up as they get that Tango is a journey with no final destination. The technique she learned over the twenty years she studied dance gives her a strong foundation for the demands of tango and it is her joy to pass this on to her students.
Together she and Angel have become well-known for their distinctive "milonguero" style of tango.