Argentine Tango Instructors
ERIC ZIMMER
Eric is a unique voice in our dance community. As a Certified Medical Exercise Specialist with a degree in Human Performance, his knowledge of body mechanics provides a safe and effective training environment for his students. He has enjoyed the honor of traveling around the country teaching, performing and competing in a variety of dance forms.
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He was featured internationally as “America’s Personal Trainer,” teaching classes and techniques that included dance, fitness and mind/body wellness. He is the author of 4 videos, the latest being a dance / fitness creation drawing heavily on his ballet background called “The Barre.”
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Eric’s dance background began 30 years ago with extensive Ballet, Modern and Jazz training. Since arriving in Portland in late 1994, he has danced for the Portland Opera as well as the gamut of local musical theatre companies . Prior to finding partner dancing, Eric danced for Kinetic Images, a local modern dance company (where, by chance, he met Shawn Gardner for the first time).
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Eric’s partner dancing credits begin with Argentine Tango 15 years ago, studying extensively with Alex Krebs. Shortly thereafter he began his ballroom study with DVIDA, being at the forefront of the development of the examination tools available to ballroom instructors world-wide today.
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Since then, he has expanded his credentials to include West Coast Swing and competitive Country Dance with the UCWDC (United Country Western Dance Council), currently participating as a masters level competitor, adjudicator and instructor throughout the country.
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Eric’s instruction has been described as “skilled, warm, patient, positive and highly instructive.”
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Eric teaches Ballroom, Latin, Smooth, Rhythm, West Coast Swing, Argentine Tango, Country, and Fitness.
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BRENDA RUSSELL
A native to Portland, OR Brenda comes from a family of social dancers and musicians. She started dancing Argentine tango in 2000 while dancing, training, and teaching at the Viscount Studios and Ballroom. Brenda’s first Tango teacher was Florencia, who often visited Portland from Argentina.
Brenda travels the world teaching movement and partner dance. She is also a certified movement educator through multiple disciplines since 2011. Brenda is known as a technician, historian, and sometimes drill sergeant.
She is most known as a dancer and teacher for her feel, and that of her students. Brenda promotes the philosophies of proprioceptive partnering, neutral frame, spinal alignment and pulse based dancing, helping her students experience an organic connection often found in native social dancers.
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LEONOR COLBERT
Leonor has been dancing her whole life; she has over 30 years of experience in various dance forms including ballet and modern, and over 20 years of experience in improvisational partner dances.
She now exclusively focuses on Argentine tango, and uses her wide breadth of dance and music experience to inform her tango. Leonor has studied tango around the world from the world's best instructors. She is also an experienced educator: in addition to graduate studies centered on learning theory and experience as a learning professional in the museum field, Leonor has taught social dance series and designed and executed dance summer camps for teens.
As a dancer, Leonor is known for the “soft touch” of her connection, fluidity, and musicality. As an educator, Leonor promotes a playful atmosphere that fosters discovery and creativity.
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DOMONIC BRIDGE
Dominic started dancing in 2005 at the age of eighteen in Eugene and Portland. After teaching around the world for the past fifteen years throughout over twenty countries, he continually strives to reach his full potential as an artist and teacher.
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After his first trip to Buenos Aires in 2007, where he studied and danced tango 25 hours a day for 70 days straight—and many people are saying that he survived on quintuple-layered cheese pizza, medialunas, and Fernet Branca alone—Dominic began teaching in Europe when he took over a tango school in Florence, Italy in 2008.
In 2010 he moved to Paris, where he found inspiration sharing the dance floor with the world’s top tango dancers living there or passing through. From Paris he became increasingly international, with artistic residencies and tango school-building in Florence, Paris, Moscow, Budapest, Portland, and Berlin. His performances and seminars have been featured in various prominent tango festivals all over North America, Europe, Russia, as well as Armenia and India.
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Dominic’s ultimate goal is to be a rising tide to lift all boats, improving the dancing of whole communities so that dancers may deepen their experience of interconnectedness and unity with themselves and one another.
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He is fluent and enjoys conversing in English, Spanish, French and Italian.
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An unfinished list of countries toured: USA (17 states), Argentina, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Ukraine, Russia, Spain, the Canary Islands, Malta, Greece, Armenia, India, and Texas.