Tango Con*Fusion

Personally, I am a terrible partner to dance with.  I am a woman who does not like taking direction.  When being taught how to salsa, Carrie, my closest friend of 20 years, yelled out in exasperation "Fine, you want to lead? LEAD!"

So imagine my excitement to find I am not alone.  Case in point, Tango Con*Fusion, an all-female tango dance troupe as reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"I love being a follower, but being able to lead, you're choreographing in the moment," Voulkos says.

"We're not trying to exclude men," Coté quickly offers. "But we want the creativity of the leader side."

They weren't alone in their desire for power and control in an intimate but machismo-dominated form. In 1996, a group of women from Berlin and New York began performing together as Tango Mujer, winning rave reviews from skeptical audiences. (Mujer, pronounced moo-HAIR, is Spanish for woman.) Two years ago, inspired by Tango Mujer's example, Debbie Goodwin decided she wanted to start a West Coast all-women tango troupe of her own. She called her favorite female tango dancers in town, looking for women with modern dance and ballet backgrounds that they could bring to a collaborative creative process. Then she brought out Tango Mujer star Brigitta Winkler to teach a private workshop, and Tango Con*Fusion was born.

Read the full article here: The leading ladies of tango...

Watch the video here: Tango Con*Fusion

Photo: Debbie Goodwin (left) pairs off with Chelsea Eng, and Christy Coté and Pier Voulkos tango during their rehearsal. Chronicle photo by Katy Raddatz