"We believe anyone can learn to dance tango well enough to enjoy themselves and
feel a sense of achievement in sharing the dance creatively with another person."

Steve is a life-long musician and creative artist. Before tango, Steve developed his teaching skills as an IT trainer for a national charity and as a horse-riding instructor. Both roles helped him to evolve a pedagogical interaction with people and an understanding that effective teaching requires a development of a student's mind, body and spirit. 

Our teaching method

Steve is a natural and intuitive teacher who draws on strengths that Myers-Briggs (MBIT) would categorise as eNFJ (extravert, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judging) a rare mix of qualities only found in 2-3% people. 

Steve is an advocate of the possible, a man who will say 'half full' rather than 'half empty', a teacher who instinctively looks to and expects the best in people. He inspires confidence and self-belief because he is enthusiastically confident and believes in himself.

As a teacher, he encourages with positive feedback, celebrating the smallest improvement. In mixed level workshops, Steve is at his best and can spontaneously and effortlessly dream up activities and imagery that will help students acquire dance skills.

He teaches tango as a process of engaging mind, body and spirit and will draw on all his life skills of theatre, music, dance, clowning and art to help people bring out their inner potential.

Steve and Debbie prefer not to teach choreography which traps dancers in sequences and makes them slaves to their memory. 

Tango is about the music and dancing from the heart. In a recent class, Steve and Debbie were working on breaking the dance down into taking one considered step at a time. In the class, Steve said "....think of tango as non-verbal communication. A conversation with a stranger will start simply and grow in depth and complexity as we learn how they respond, what they are interested in, what moves them and what they don't like." To illustrate this, he showed the dancers  exercises to apply this concept in the way mind and body could understand. 

"Start every dance simply - even with a partner you know well. They can have off days too and need to refocus on you and your dance. Don't hurry steps, savour moments of simply walking together in an embrace. Ask yourself - can you feel her heart beat? Can you feel tension? Are you tense? Don't forget to breathe. A deep, slowly exhaled breath in an embrace will encourage your partner to relax."

Read other articles by Steve on argentine tango in Pink Papers.

Where can I learn to dance with Steve and Debbie?

We teach group workshops, weekly classes, private lessons at Bramshaw in the New Forest. Directions

We also host special teaching events like 'Tango at La Rogaia' in Italy. Occasionally, we lead workshops and teach at festivals and other tango events around the country which we publish on our events page and via our 'opt-in' email newsletter.