Queer Tango as Gender Laboratory
Co-created and co-taught by Luna Beller-Tadiar and Maikel Dobarro
This workshop, led by two queer tango artists, comes out of years of thinking and moving together, as a duo and within larger local and international queer tango communities. In it, we lead participants through some of the bodily experimentation of gender and relation that we have both observed and participated in as part our politicized queer tango practice. This practice is both about resisting the ways we are violently dispossessed of our own bodies, and about making new bodily possibilities with and for each other. Through a concept-rich warm up; carefully framed tango fundamentals; invitation to reflection and conversation; and more expansive guided group play, we aim to introduce participants to tango practice and to the rich space of possibility for (de)gendered relation that queer dancers make there. Participants will come away with some practical tango skills; a richer sense of tango’s worlds; an experiential glimpse of “queer tango as gender laboratory”; and somatic-relational tools to take into their daily lives and movement practices.
The Dance Studies Association Conference queer/cuir/quare working group, at the Universidad de Buenos Aires Philosophy building.
Past editions:
The Dance Studies Association Conference (Buenos Aires) July 2024 (In English and Spanish)
La Maison Ouverte (Montreuil, France) July 2025 (In French)
Au Coeur de danse fleur festival (Lyon, France) July 2025 (In French)
La Maison Ouverte (Montreuil, France) July 2025 (In French)
Luna Beller-Tadiar (she/they/ella/elle/elle/iel) is a queer Filipinx-US-American artist, performer, and PhD student who focuses on kinesthetic processes of gender, colonialism, diaspora, and new media. With a movement background in aikido, capoeira, tango, and contemporary dance, her work across media returns constantly to a chameleon-like body that transforms through linguistic and socio-kinesthetic forms. Luna’s performance work has been shown at Movement Research at Judson Church, Ailey Theater, Mark Morris Dance Center, the 92NY, and American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers. Her work with queer Argentine tango has received support from Yale University; McGill University; and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (with Phi Lee Lam). She frequently serves as a community translator for the queer tango community internationally, has taught queer tango at ADF studios and Duke University, and currently teaches at The LGBTQ Center in NYC.
Maikel Dobarro (elle/él/they/he/iel/il) is a Buenos Aires born and raised teacher and dancer of Tango, holding an “Intérprete de Tango” degree received from the National University of the Arts (UNA), and with over 20 years of tango experience. They coordinate the workshop "El Tango como Laboratorio de Género”* in the UNA-Folklore Extension. Maikel dances, writes, sings, and DJs. They are passionate about exploring the intersections of tango dance and other languages, and expanding beyond the limits of the stage. From movements for a transfeminist, cuir, decolonial, and antiracist thought, they created the dissident tango práctica “La Fuga” (@tangoenfuga) which has become a space of collective encounter and artistic expression for sexual-political dissidents in Buenos Aires.
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*The phrase “tango as gender laboratory,” is something Luna came up with and shared in the online, international community discussions organized by Chamuyo Queer in May 2020. Born from experience and conversation in queer community, it became a focusing phrase for more conversation between the two artists and took on a life of its own in each of their practices: Luna extended it through theoretical writing and performance practice, and Maikel transformed it into a multi-month workshop class that they taught at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes Extension in Buenos Aires, which has been rich space for its practical experimentation and transformation.