More About Susana Miller
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Susana Miller is the preeminent teacher of Argentine Tango in the Milonguero Style, a term she coined to introduce tango apilado to students around the world. Milonguero Style is a synthesis of Susana’s studies over the years of the unique dancing styles of the older milongueros. She has a gift for deciphering their distinct vocabularies and choreographic combinations, and transmitting these to her students.
Tango Milonguero/Apilado is a rich and complex form of subtle body signals that profoundly respects tango's rhythms while emphasizing musicality, the connection between partners, and a compact choreography that creatively employs the limited space of the social dance floor. (This is what you need to dance in Argentina and at major U.S. festivals!)
Susana's exploration of apilado dancing is a huge contribution to passing on this popular form of social tango. She encourages students to employ more rhythm in their dance, to discover their own dance vocabularies, and to learn how to shape and shrink these in space. For women, she encourages active dancing, in which the woman interprets the messages that the man's body and the spirit are sending.
Susana has likely contributed to putting more people on the dance floors of Buenos Aires than any other single teacher. A 1999 article in Clarin, the major Buenos Aires daily paper, notes her influence as the primary advocate of the "Almagro style," one of the three "prevailing tendencies" (primary style influences) of the contemporary dance halls of Buenos Aires. (The others, as deliniated by this article, are "Villa Urquiza," referring to a neighborhood style, and that of Gustav Naveira, popularly referred to as "nuevo," although not by Naveira himself.)
Susana's instruction will help students improve posture, axis, grounding, breathing, balance, and sensitivity to the men's & women's roles. She encourages dancers to develop their own unique improvisational styles through knowledge of the music, space and body. Her classes emphasize step quality and rhythm. Rather than predetermined patterns, she imparts a basic choreographic vocabulary that allows dancers to creatively shape their own language.
Susana is a native of Buenos Aires and has been dancing and teaching tango since the late 1980s revival of social tango. She founded and operates her own tango academy in Buenos Aires, at one of B.A.'s most popular tango clubs, El Beso. She has made annual teaching tours to the United States and Europe since 1994. Susana is cited as a master teacher by many prominent teachers/dancers, and her teaching has impacted innumerable students of this beautiful dance.