TangoIntensivo™ Session FAQ
Accommodations & Training Facility Location in Buenos Aires
A: Most students prefer booking accommodations close to the training facility. For our 2025 Sessions, we are returning to the fabulous Velasco Fabrica Studios located at Juan Ramirez de Velasco 1481 in the Villa Crespo district of Buenos Aires. In general, the most convenient neighborhoods within easy walking distance to Fabrica include Villa Crespo, Palermo Soho, Palermo Viejo and Palermo Hollywood.
Q: Do you have suggestions about where to stay? What milongas to attend? Restaurant recommendations?
A: Yes to all of the above! Directly following completion of tuition payment, we initiate an e-registration process tailored for each registered student. These e-registration messages, in addition to serving as your receipt, contain vital details about each session (confirmed studio location, daily training schedules, additional announcements, etc.). We also provide an orientation document with a list of Buenos Aires resources to assist students with trip planning such as navigating air and ground travel, exchanging money, suggested practicas, milongas, shoe-shopping, restaurants, scenic tours, museums, galleries, artisanal fairs, bookshops, cafes, theater, etc.
Q: Can you help us find a guest house in a nice district?
A: Tuition does not cover professional travel services but as described above and in the “Travel Information” question below, registered students receive access to travel resources as an added benefit.
Travel Information
Q: What travel guidance or info do you provide?
A: Once you become a registered student, expect to receive e-mailed communications providing payment confirmation, updates and alerts plus access to our exclusive “required reading” Orientation Info section for registered students only. Following the Required Reading section, we include our “TRIP TIPS” section on airline travel, hiring drivers, guided city tours, what weather to expect and clothing advice, accommodation suggestions, restaurant and shopping haunts, exchanging money, security strategies and much more.
Skill Level for our TangoIntensivo™ sessions
This question comes up often because the frequency and skill level of new and returning students varies widely from strong beginner all the way up to professional level teachers and performers. For students at a more advanced level (teachers, organizers, veteran social and/or stage dancers), regardless of your tango prowess, prepare to grow in every way – with respect to your understanding of both roles, increasing your grasp of vocabulary, improvisational possibilities, quality of musicality/connection/movement/dynamics/range etc.
We recommend that, at minimum, leader students can execute/lead and follower students can respond/follow:
- walking in and/or transitioning between the two systems (parallel and cross)
- lead/follow the walk to the cross (la cruzada)
- lead/follow front and back ochos
- lead/follow full and/or partial turns (giros/molinete’s)
- dancing in and transitioning to/from open to close embrace
- safely lead/follow this vocabulary on a typical milonga floor following line-of-dance etiquette
We’ll be glad to assist you personally in determining if our sessions are appropriate for your level. We’re happy to prepare you in advance for getting the most out of our TangoIntensivo™ sessions, including following up after you’ve attended our sessions to help you retain and integrate all you’ve learned. We’re available in our private lesson studios – Luciana Valle in Buenos Aires at lv@lucianavalle.com and/or Deb & Brian in Boulder, Colorado at tangolessons@danceoftheheart.com.
What to Expect
A: Because students are partnering with and rotating to ONLY our trained staff, as a customer you can expect to receive better than 1 on 1 attention. That is NOT a typo! We also place a limit on the number of students we admit per session to avoid over-crowding and to place the focus on YOUR improvement.
Benefits of our approach:
1) The level and quality of instruction from Luciana.
2) The skilled dancers we hire to partner with you so you can work at YOUR highest level.
3) The sessions are staged in Buenos Aires where students can soak in the culture/language/milieu that gave birth to the tango.
4) For the price of one airline ticket you can opt to take 2 sessions in a condensed 2 week period for maximum immersion.
5) You’re temporarily separated from your local life/work/tango communities and partners to really FOCUS on YOUR dance.
Q: Does the partnering change through the week? Or are you with the same person for the whole week?
A: We’ve established a systematic rotation structure where students rotate every two songs (almost a full tanda) among our assistants/professional staff partners.
A: Our inspiration for developing this program was based on our own desire to continue pursuing our fullest potential as dancers and teachers. We figured that, by training with dancers better than us under the instruction of the best teachers in the Argentine tango world (…and if you don’t know yet, you’ll understand SOON why Luciana Valle is among the best of the VERY best), we would break through to another level in our dancing – and our hopes have been fulfilled beyond our wildest expectations not just for us but for all our students!
It’s hard to describe until you experience it for yourself, but for most of our students, it’s a tango-dream-come-true situation.
Q: How many hours total can we count on? What is the session schedule on a daily basis?
A: Each NORMAL session delivers 4 hours daily or 20 hours total from Monday through Friday. The morning sessions are held from 11am to 1pm with a short hour break followed by afternoon sessions from 2 to 4pm.
Q: What is the difference between the sessions?
A: Luciana retains control over the specific curriculum introduced and studied in a given session, varying it to fit the needs of the individuals in attendance. Her decades of high-level teaching experience and superlative mastery of the art of tango teaching leads us to trust her judgement in this area.
Generally, material within two adjacent sessions/sharing a weekend in between, is integrated into a harmonic whole while still allowing for each session to stand on its own. The level is the same (intermediate to advanced) in all 4 NORMAL sessions we offer annually. Most of our students value the sessions so highly, they return year after year, repeating all 4 NORMALS regardless of the material.
Q: Will we be attending milongas in the evenings or shopping or sharing meals as a group?
A: Organizing social activities is not covered in the cost of your tuition. You are free to use your non-class time as you desire. It’s common practice for fellow students to make informal plans together post-class to share meals, city tours, museum and gallery hopping, shopping adventures, attending practicas/milongas/other classes. There is a tradition (totally optional, of course!) of attending Luciana’s acclaimed El Motivo Practica (over 2 decades old and still going strong!) on Monday nights.
Q: What are chances of a program being cancelled?
A: In the 2+ decades of sessions delivered since February 2005, we have had only one cancellation. In that unusual case (Luciana was pregnant!), all registered students were alerted 6+ months in advance and refunded fully (refund policy listed on our registration page).
Registration Details
A: Our reimbursement policy is available on our registration page (scroll below the PayPal buttons) as follows:
“Refund Policy: Fifty percent of the Registration Fee will be refunded if a refund request is received by four weeks before the start of the first day of a given session. No refund requests will be accepted after this deadline. However, if you find your own replacement or if we are able to fill your spot from a waiting list, refund requests (less $40 administrative fees) will be honored at any time. Refunds will not be generated until AFTER payment from your replacement has been confirmed. In ALL refund cases, PayPal or any bank fees are not refundable after your initial payment has cleared.”
We STRONGLY urge students to consider purchasing travel insurance in the unlikely event of an unexpected trip cancellation.
A: Full tuition payment is required to reserve your place in any given session. While Luciana is delighted when students contact her to register, she sends everyone to this website and/or to inquire directly with Brian and/or Deb at Dance of the Heart (DoTH). TangoIntensivo™ Session registration is handled in our DoTH offices in Boulder, Colorado, USA. While an email or phone call is useful to express your intentions, we cannot confirm or hold a place in any given session until we receive full tuition payment. The exception is an email announcing your registration AFTER popping your snail-mailed check into a box or the post office (full instructions below). Your reservation will be respected while your check is in transit. Once the check arrives, we will send an e-confirm and begin your formal e-registration process if we haven’t sold out in the meantime.
The most popular payment options include Zelle (fee-free) or snail-mailing a personal USA-based check through the US post (cost of a card, envelope, stamp, transit time) or by paying on-line at our website utilizing our PayPal buttons (most convenient and immediate confirmation). Some students (outside the USA, for example) request bank, venmo or zelle transfers which we are happy to arrange by request but like PayPal, students are responsible for any associated transfer fees. After we receive payment, we respond typically within 24 hours to confirm. If we’re sold out, your payment will be refunded in full (minus PayPal or associated bank transfer fees).
Q: What specific steps do I take to register/pay for tuition based on your most popular options?
Payment Option #1: Snail Mailing a Personal Check
- Make check/s payable to “DoTH LLC” or “Dance of the Heart LLC”
- For 1 session/1 week per student:
- Advanced Discount price until August 1, 2025 is US$895.00
- Regular tuition price after August 1, 2025 is US$965.00
- Please include a note with your check that identifies:
- student name/s and email address
- specific session/s the tuition check covers
- the role that student is planning to train (“Follower” or “Leader”)
- Send an e-mail to us (tangolessons@danceoftheheart.com) AFTER your check has been mailed so we can reserve your place
- Exact snail mailing address (for added security please use a greeting card or paper folded over your check):
- Brian Dunn & Deb Sclar
- 2890 Shadow Creek Drive #304
- Boulder, CO 80303 USA
- Assumming we’re not sold out, when your check is received, we’ll launch your e-registration process
Payment Option #2: PayPal (fee involved)
- Log onto our registration page (https://danceoftheheart.com/tangointensivo-registration/)
- Select the appropriate PayPal button and follow instructions
- To purchase more than one session, repeat process for each individual session you wish to purchase
- When payment is accepted, PayPal will generate and send an e-confirmation to you and to our USA TangoIntensivo™ Sessions office
- Assumming we’re not sold out, we’ll proceed with launching your e-registration process
Did we overlook a question you feel should be included in this FAQ? Please contact our offices with any feedback or if you have any remaining questions. We look forward to sharing a few weeks with you of spectacular tango training sessions in Buenos Aires in the near future!