Keith: Carolina, Diego, how long have you been together now as partners?

Both: In life, or ...

Keith: What came first?

Carolina: We've been together since we were 15 years old and we are 28 and 29 now; so, 12, 13 years.

Keith: How did you meet?

Diego: Dancing, of course! I mean ... I used to dance Argentine folk dance - we both did but at different schools - but with the same teacher. They had a yearly dance, but at their school there weren't enough guys, so my teacher bring me to her school. And there is where we met.

Keith: When did you start thinking about going professional?

Carolina: Well, he was already professional; he started dancing at 4 years old and he was professional at 12 and he start travelling at 16 with Copes ... you came here to Miami first right?

Diego: Um hum.

Keith: How did you get your first job together?

Diego: We didn't think about dancing together, really. I was dancing with my ex-partner, Natalia, but we broke up. I was thinking to keep dancing but without a partner for now, let's say. And then I began with the idea, OK, why not try it - see what happens.

Carolina: I was not a dancer. He was already a professional so I thought it was impossible. I saw him on stage and he was god for me and I never thought I could be there with him. It never crossed my mind. And Natalia for me is one of the best tango dancers in the world so I never thought I could take her place. So, but he say, well I'm travelling a lot so it's hard to be with you so why don't you try and dance with me?

Both: So, we tried.

Diego: And ... it didn't work (chuckle).

Carolina: It was too much pressure for me and it didn't work.

Diego: So, we tried for like, 2 months and it didn't work, so we kind of quit; and then after 5 or 6 months we decide to try again. And - I mean, here we are, right? After we start trying the second time, we see that it start working a little bit, so we keep going.

Carolina: It wasn't easy - he was very patient with me because I wasn't a dancer. He was dancing with Natalia in Forever Tango and when he stopped dancing with her he left the company. Then a few months later they called us to join. So, we didn't have to audition or anything. My first job was in San Francisco with Forever Tango, so I was very lucky - and with one of the best dancers!

Keith: Forever Tango, being so big, gave you a platform and a profile to launch a career, (Both: yes) so, now tell us what your life involves ... over the course of the last year where have you been and what have you been doing?

Diego: (smile) Well, we always do many things! Besides teaching and big events like this (Miami Tango Fantasy) we do different kinds of events; like, we did Carnegie Hall; we travel to Europe and around the United States with different companies. But in general what we do now is a weekend or one night event - a special thing. Because we don't want to get into a company and travel like we did with Forever Tango for now. We feel we need to work a little bit more so we maybe develop our own idea of a show.

Carolina: We like to have freedom, you know. We worked in Forever Tango for 4 years and touring constantly with them without a house, it was crazy. It was a great experience, but now we need a little more freedom to decide what to do. And we are very happy in New York. It's a great city for us because it's ... there are lots of good musicians living there and not many good dancers, but it's a city that has a lot in common with Buenos Aires and tango and a lot of history in common to Piazzolla and Gardel, so ... we have a group of very good friends, so we talk about tango, we dance, and it inspires us for our choreography, for the way we work.

Keith: And you go back frequently to Buenos Aires?

Diego: Yeah, we try to be in Buenos Aires twice a year. With our tour, and we stay longer to be with our families and also to go to tango and enjoy scenes.

Carolina: Usually we go in March and September.

Keith: It must be interesting to be away, come back, go away, come back ... tell us about the changes you've seen over the last couple of years there.

Diego: A lot of changes! (laughs)

Keith: Such as?

Diego: When I started dancing, we were maybe 3 young couples. 4. Then, were the milongueros, right? Then we started travelling and when we come back there is a lot of young people in tango. Which is great. Because culturally, they need to know what is tango, and I think that if you want to know what is something, you have to try it first and then you decide if you like it or not, right? And so young people started knowing really what is tango.

Carolina: Yeah, but they are also trying new things; tango it becomes a lot more open and people share ideas or steps or movements or feelings. It wasn't that way before. It was very closed - every good dancer kept their steps for themselves.

Diego: It was very conservative.

Carolina: So now professional dancers are still very respectful with other dancer's steps or stuff, but it's a lot more open and we help each other and if you see a young person starting, you try to help him and it was not like that before. So the new tango fashion in Argentina brought a lot of - I don't know - a different energy to tango everywhere. Not just in Buenos Aires but in New York, Miami ...

Diego: Yeah, everywhere. And also it ... I always say the same thing, right? Tango before, the young people, my age, they were looking at tango like, OK - if you have your suit, your patent leather shoes and your tie, OK you can dance tango. But you have to wear that. Yeah?

But then when we traveled and came back and saw the young people started going on tango, I mean that changed it a lot. They are wearing jeans, sneakers, and I feel it's nice. I mean, if they feel comfortable wearing that, it's fine. Of course, if you pivot in tango shoes you're going to pivot much better than in sneakers. So, it depends how far you want to go - how good you wanna dance. If you want to turn 20 turns, or you want to turn just one.

Carolina: Now there are less rules and everything is OK to try. It used to be very strict before. You couldn't try anything new because the good dancers or good milongueros would think you were crazy. "We are real tangueros," you know.

When I started dancing in ninety-something, tango was not from the 90's, tango was something ... old. So to do that, they made you feel you were not from that period. They said, well you cannot dance tango because you don't know how we danced in the street and how we created all those steps ... and they make you feel like it was not yours. "You cannot even try because this is from MY epoch." So they tried to keep young people away from tango.

Diego: Yeah and keeping with that concept, you never feel like you were a milonguero, because they danced in the street and they became milongueros, right? So, now you get into this world and you don't feel milonguero because you never lived those kind of things.

Carolina: Then we realized here that we are milongueros too. People asked us, what is a milonguero? So we thought, well, milonguero is the one who goes to the milongas. So they said you are milongueros. We said, no, old people are milongueros!

But actually, there are a lot of Russian milongueros, or American milongueros, so why not? It used to be like a title, and I think that concept has changed.

Keith: But you were telling me that even the old milongueros now have a new attitude - more open.

Diego: Yeah. Before, you didn't feel that - let's say you take a class - you didn't feel they were teaching you everything. They all would keep the secret. Right? They show you the movement, but they keep the secret.

Keith: My first teacher said, "I don't give my blood."

Diego & Carolina: (chuckle)

Diego: But now I think they realize it's good for the young people and it's for to grow the community and they've started sharing more secrets. So, I find that great. Yeah. Because when I learned, I just was copying steps. And we started developing new concepts because of that ... I mean, we didn't know how to explain one thing. But now the milongueros too are trying to explain things, so it's much better. It's like one step ahead.

Carolina: Yeah, but also now some milongueros have a chance to be taped or ... most of them don't perform or make instruction videos so there is no documentation. You know, they worked so hard their whole life to create something you know, they are dancers so they try to develop their own style. But when they die ... there are no documents, no videos about them.

Diego: So I think they start realzing about that.

Carolina: We are lucky because we are dancers so we have our videos, we do our shows so people copy and learn but the older milongueros when they died that left nothing because they didn't want to share their steps.

Keith: By the way, in the lobby I've been watching your teaching video, which is beautiful. How do people get that?

Diego: The easiest way is to go to our website (carolinaydiego.com); (link at bottom of page).

Carolina: Those videos were produced by us and we use the music of Color Tango, which I think is beautiful. They were made in New York and we are very proud of those 4 videos in the series.

Keith: When you are teaching, what is it you are trying to give people?

Diego: Well, personally I try to give them everything. I mean ... if I teach a side step, for example, it's not just a side step. But I mind the technique. I want you to do the step in a way that you feel comfortable. And always so you can mix it with another thing.

Carolina: And we are teaching less "steps" all the time. Actually, one of the teachers said to me yesterday, "One of your students say they worked so hard and they didn't learn any steps - what did you do?" And I say, we just make them work hard (laughs). We just give them a chance to work and improve, even on what the other teachers teach them.

I think we try to make them understand what they do. Sometimes they are learning so many steps they don't know what they are doing, or don't know how to lead their partner. So, we are happy if at the end of the class they are conscious about what they are doing and especially if they are dancing together. We want them to know how to lead and how to follow well.

Diego: Generally what happens is that they are not conscious of their partners because they are thinking on their own. And it happens also that, I mean you can see in the milongas that they are not connected. Of course that's not good. So we're trying to develop that sense. How to be aware of your partner, know where he or she is, how to receive or lead your partner. So when they have this concept they can do whatever they want to do. The steps now are not important if they know how to lead and how to follow and to be connected.

Carolina: They can learn steps from videos or any teacher - even if the teacher is not good they can learn steps, always. But they need to understand the basics and especially how to lead and how to follow.

Keith: You must be seeing better quality as you travel around the world than 4 or 5 years ago ...

Carolina: Yes - much better. Excellent. Especially in Montreal - that's a good city; San Francisco, New York - yeah, it's so different than 5 years ago. But also there are a lot more small cities where tango is danced also.

Keith: The problem in the smaller places is that "the same 30 people" come every week; there's never enough men; the same stories everywhere. Do you have any advice about how to grow the scene aside from bringing in stars like yourselves, which is the obvious way?

Diego: The big thing to grow a scene is a show. If there's a tango show in town, people get interested in it. If there's not a show, you try to take the teacher to the university to bring more people, get them on tv. I mean, everything is promotion, like Madonna says. If they talk good or they talk bad it's all promotion. If a teacher is good or not - but they perform - it's good for the community.

Carolina: But some promoters are very good. They get free ads in the newspapers, get on the radio, they send press releases, it's a lot of work. They perform in ballroom parties, or ...

Diego: Everything is promotion.

Keith: Will you be taking out another show?

Diego: We have to choreograph a tango show in September to do in New York - but it's a different concept. "Tangos from Heaven and Hell." It's theatrical. And then of course we are always developing new ideas for our own shows.

Carolina: It takes time. And we are in AVANTANGO, too. It was created in New York - we did it at Town Hall a few months ago. And the music is unbelievable. They are great musicians like, Hector del Curto, Fernando Otero, Pablo Aslan, Fernando Terro, I don't remember all of them but they play Piazzolla and Fernando's music - very modern and nice.

The other show is more theatrical, where we are going to act also and maybe sing ...

Diego: I'm not going to sing! I'm no good in singing! (They laugh).

Carolina: With a good director, maybe!

Diego: We are always working on new ideas. But it's always hard to work in new ideas. We want to do something different than other shows. Almost all the shows, they have a fight for the girl, and they have Cumparsita, Jealousy, Libre Tango ... so to change completely the concept of a show is hard. And depending on the idea, the budget is higher or not.

Keith: How many songs do you have worked up at any given time?

Diego (counts): 5 or 6.

Keith: And how do you know when it's time to drop one or do a new one?

Diego: It's hard to explain because it's a feeling, right? But I mean ... at the beginning you start knowing the tango. At the beginning you think, we're going to be late with the music - not late, but not exactly with the beat. After that, you start getting comfortable and enjoying it, the choreography. After you start enjoying it, it's hard to keep that feeling longer.

Carolina: For 2 or 3 years, it's hard. Because you feel it for a year or so, but then ... it depends on the song, also because sometimes you can change the feeling. Like Milongueando, I always enjoyed it but now we feel it's time to ...

Diego: To put it under (laughs). So, the last feeling you get is, not boring but - kind of. You can start to dance mechanically. So there is when you should (snaps fingers).

Keith: How long might it take you to work up a new choreography for a song? Do you do bits at a time?

Diego: Depends. If you really want to do it good, you don't want to spend too much time building the choreography. Because you want to do it beginning to the end. In the rehearsal - right? - if you do always the first part, and you rehearse that and then the second part, etc. you start to lose the idea.

Like, we chose La Yumba. It's the new choreography we did. Uh ... you develop an idea with the music. So you don't want to miss the idea. So if you take 2 or 3 months, the idea change.

Carolina: It's better to do the whole choreography, have a general idea of what you want, and then you can clean it up or change a little thing and make it better.

Keith: Do you use video to remind yourself what you did?

Diego: No.

Carolina: Sometimes ... we did it with the last two songs.

Diego: Yeah.

Carolina: Most of the steps were so different from what we used to do that we used the camera to see how it goes. But usually we prefer to feel how it goes; to choreograph based with our feelings with the music and not how it looks.

Of course we know how it looks because we've seen our videos so many times we have an image in our head of how every step could look.

Diego: And if we want to choreograph something say from the 20's that is something specific, or canyengue let's say, there - OK - we videotape because we wanna see if we are showing the idea or not. We know our body but we know our body dancing now. So, if we dance canyengue we have to work harder so we can develop the idea.

Keith: You travel a lot - do you handle your own bookings?

Diego: Yes. In general, we try to organize our year in December, January and February. Then a certain thing will change, but more or less we keep the same schedule.

Keith: Tell us about your group tour to Buenos Aires.

Carolina: Well, it's a different concept. It's not like a congress or a festival - it's something more intimate with only one group of students. We check their level in the first class and design a study program based on what they need to learn that first day. Then they have classes every day with us so we can make sure they all learn, you know? We start from basic things just to make sure everybody knows our style of teaching and our basics well and we go from there.

We also have 4 guest teachers who do master classes. Last year we had Mingo and Ester Pugliese, Melina Brufman, Fernando Galera and Vilma Vega and Julio Balmaceda and Corina de la Rosa - all teachers we think are great.

Diego: And the idea in our tour is not to have a big group. Last year we had 25 people. And we want to keep it at that or 30, but that's it. We want them to learn. Our goal is for them to learn and understand and to know Buenos Aires.

Carolina: It's 10 days, from September 19 to the 29th. Basically we have classes from 12 to 5:30, and then we take them to a milonga, tango shows, a lot of different activities and to cafés and places we like in Buenos Aires. The real city.

Diego: And we take them to the country - one hour from the city - you see just grass.

Carolina: They ride horses and dance chacarera and get to relax for the day. It's a nice experience.

And this is the email address for more information.

Keith: Carolina, Diego, muchísimas gracias!

Carolina & Diego: De nada!

Carolina & Diego's website.