GOA TANGOS!

IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO

By MDT for Goa Backstage 

What brings people to Goa? Is it the paradise like metaphors that hang around? Such as the succumbing heat, the lush coconut trees, the beaches and riding around on two wheelers? Or is it our music scene and way of life that intrigues visitors to venture into the Konkan? Perhaps it is all of the above. However for one particular visitor in focus, it is not only nature, music and culture, but love, passion and romance and dancing feet. Maike Brummerloh, Tango Instructor has come to Goa mainly for her Fiancé but has also begun to spread Tango fever.

Originating form Germany, Maike encompasses music, culture, love, passion and romance with dance. And there surely, there is no other more passionate dance form other than Tango. As the old saying goes, “it takes two to Tango” and is danced between a man and a woman exposing moves, so gracious, deep and passionate as an unending love. And this is what Maike brings new to Goa, an opportunity to re-ignite the passion that already lives in us Goankars, the passion to dance. How did Maike get into instructing Tango? Goa Backstage takes an exclusive look into the life of Maike Brummerloh.

Maike Comes form Bremen in North Germany and had encountered beginner Tango classes in Berlin while attending university for German literature and Philosophy. It was there that Maike signed up for Tango classes and Ballroom. At this point Maike’s passion for ballroom dance was ever growing. After dancing a few competitions, Maike encountered a few professional Tango Argentino dancers. Since her hometown of Bremen, had no Tango teachers and so Maike set out to stay in Berlin to study and to dance.

“After my master degrees, I spent two years as a directors assistant in different theater projects. At the same time, I did a course to learn how to be a Tango Teacher. That is when I was dancing up to five times a week and danced for three, to nine hours without a break. That is the Tango-Fever”

Maike also explain that the Tango-Teaching-Course included learning how a brain functions and controls the body in dance. In Europe this is a well-known method of Moshe Feldenkrais. Maike was very interested in this method and studied a bodywork method called Grinberg for more than three years. “The Grinberg method is based on developing and focusing our attention to choose, how we relate to pain and fear, so we can deal with it much easier, than we are used to”.

After being successfully self-employed with Grinberg for two and a half years, Maike decided to go on a trip around the world. The trip started in Goa, and well two years later Maike is still in Goa, spreading the Tango.

So how did the Tango fever start to spread all over Goa? Maike explains that she did not intentionally want to be a Tango Instructor here, it just kind of happened.

“A young woman, like me, very fascinated by Tango and it’s music was awed when she found out I could teach the Tango. But without knowing how to dance the moves, she begged me for weeks to show her the basics, in which I did. Then people just started to get to know me down here and the response is full of surprises and very interesting”

So there we have it, a young woman’s passion for dance proves infectious and before we know it the whole of Goa will be high temperature and “tango-ing” their drive for passion and romance.