In conversation with Alicia (part one)
Often when a tango teacher visits Toronto we don’t have the opportunity to get to know them, beyond the context of a class or workshop. We’d like to “introduce” you to Alicia through a series of conversations that she has had with Isabella. Enjoy…
1. What brought you first to tango?
Alicia: My parents met while dancing tango. My family, aunts and uncles all danced. I remember dancing as a small child on my fathers’ feet. Even when my mother was pregnant with me I danced while in her belly. Tango is in my blood. In my adolescence I got away from it but again it came back into my life at the age of twenty when I was at a party and saw a couple dancing.
2. What was the reaction of your friends and family outside of tango when you first started?
Alicia: They have always encouraged me and now they feel proud of what I have been able to do.
3. What was the cultural climate like when you started tango and how has it changed over the years?
Alicia: The thing that has changed the most is that now it has a commercial side to it that before did not exist. Everybody danced because they enjoyed it. Now many things have appeared, taxi tango dancers, lots of teachers etc.
4. What do people in Argentina think of people that visit Buenos Aires mainly for tango..tango tourists?
Alicia: They can’t believe that tango attracts lots of tourists to come to Buenos Aires, and that they stay two or three weeks or more “ONLY TO DANCE”.
5. What was the most significant thing you learned from Graciela Gonzalez?
Alicia: Graciela was my model, she gave me the technique, her elegance. The way that she moves her feet gave me the inspiration to create my own expression.
6. How did you enjoy teaching with Cacho Dante?
Alicia: With Cacho we had a lovely school, he always respected my concepts and I always respected his. I always felt good teaching classes with him.
7. Being a world class dancer and teacher puts you in the spotlight often. What is the most important thing you would like people to learn from you?
Alicia: Really I would like to transmit the sentiment of dancing, the connection with the partner and with the music more so than the “steps”. I always say that “tango happens inside you”.
Practica El Beso 
February 14, 2012 at 8:44 pm
Wow … such graceful fluid movements. Each individual step ‘flows’!
February 15, 2012 at 1:36 am
Yes, it does flow, just wait till you get to experience Alicia in person.
January 5, 2015 at 10:25 am
Excellent..!!..I hope,Mr Nassopoulos is Greek,or at least of Greek origins!..(Down here,in Athens-Greece,almost every one wants to dance like a stage-tango superstar! The result,of course,is a kind of..war-zone in the milongas of Athens..!).
January 6, 2015 at 8:26 pm
Close embrace tango is such an exquisite social dance.
Imagining a ‘war-zone’ in the ronda does not sound inspiring.
I wonder how you think you could help achieve a more social tango environment in Athens?