Award-winning Argentine Tango dancers Diego Blanco and Ana Padron are one of the top performing young couples in the world today. Their tango style is energetic, rhythmical, and innovative, and through their fluid moves they fuse nuevo tango with the close embrace look of traditional tango. They co- founded their dance company, Tango for All, to bring this electrifying tango to audiences in America and throughout the world.
Diego and Ana command a wide range of dance disciplines from which they tap inspiration for their movement. In addition to Argentine Tango, these include Classical Ballet, Jazz, African, and Jose Limon, Martha Graham, and Jennifer Muller techniques. They have honed these techniques and skills since their paths first crossed at the New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida, culminating in Bachelor in Fine Arts degrees from the University of Florida, from which they both graduated with Honors.
Diego and Ana have radiated their love of tango and brought audiences to their feet in applause over many years in many nations: they have toured throughout the United States, the Caribbean, South America, Europe and Asia. They have brought tango to numerous off-Broadway shows, and danced and choreographed for an independent film. Outside of the tango realm, they have choreographed and danced for legendary modern dance companies that include Jennifer Muller and Martha Graham.
The name “Tango for All” was inspired by Diego and Ana’s work with the program You Move Me Tango developed by the Shimmy Club, an organization that preserves and promotes music, art and dance traditions from around the world with the goal of strengthening community interactions. Ana explains that the Shimmy Club’s You Move Me Tango program, which is open to the visually impaired youth, “empowers them with improved health and fitness, feelings of self-worth, and increased self-confidence to engage socially with a broadening circle of peers with and without disabilities.” Ana says, “the reason we chose Tango For All was that we wanted tango to be open to everyone across cultures and nationalities.”
Diego and Ana now teach tango workshops and private lessons that involve a holistic understanding of movement and an increased awareness of the body as the bases for musicality and creativity.
For the sake of their strong love of communication through movement, Diego and Ana cross yet another set of boundaries with their company’s first co-production with Rapture Tango, The Tango Zone: a mix of tango, theatre and video. The Tango Zone presents tango as a language, expanding traditional tango themes to encompass funny, exciting, dramatic and even mundane aspects of existence, both real and imaginary. The show represents a confluence of visions, cultures and media, brought together in a celebration of the multitude of experiences and relationships that make up the fabric of living.
Diego and Ana are currently members of The Mariela Franganillo Company: Tango Connection and have recently performed, among others, at Princeton Tango Festival, the Count Basie Theatre, Colony Theater, King Power Theater, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in shows with: the Williamsport Symphony Orchestra, the Eternal Tango Orchestra, the Romulo Larrea Tango Orchestra, the Washington Pan-American Symphony Orchestra, and Latin Grammy Winner Raul Jaurena.
