Tango Libertad is a collaboration between Colette and Katerina. Their love of tango is what brought them together and their passion for liberation fuels their creativity. For many of us dancing tango brings out our truest self, but can we truly be ourselves if we are not free to be?
Katerina and Colette met when Katerina wanted to find a tango instructor that would embrace the idea of a female leader, and luckily she found Madame Colette.
From their first meeting at the dance studio, they knew something was there.
“I remember this woman with a French accent walking out to greet me, and I immediately felt a jolt inside,” recalled Katerina. Colette felt it too.
I am embarrassed to say that I (Katerina) quickly looked at Colette’s nails and noticed that they were long and red, and immediately thought,” not a chance.” Fortunately, she was wrong.
Since taking their first steps on the dance floor, they have traveled the world from Buenos Aries to Berlin, attending queer tango festivals.
Katerina realized that for Colette, who was the US tango champion, attending beginner workshops a few years ago was entirely out of love. I remember going to one of these workshops, and the instructor had no idea who Colette was, and she asked us to do something simple. For someone who has danced with the top tango dancers worldwide, that might have been insulting, but Colette wanted to be a supportive partner to Katerina’s learning.
Tango is a popular social dance all around the world. It’s unique in that it brings two strangers in an intimate embrace.
“There is something very humanistic about this dance,” said Colette. Too often, people think tango is all about the raw passion, which it can be, but it is much more than that. In its essence, tango is about the embrace between two individuals and their trust to communicate their emotions to each other in a dialogue of movement.
Ma Fiancée from Tango Libertad on Vimeo.
Tango is also an art form, and like any art, it should broaden perspectives and push on societal norms.
Katerina and Colette started Tango Libertad with the goal of broadening what a “typical” tango couple looks like and, more broadly, to use tango as a medium to share their love story.