Comments Susana Miller - About me

 

Susana breaks down the dance of the miloguero's and reassembles it into an exlainable,organic process. Wheather leader or follower, novice or advanced, you'll come away from Susana's workshops with a deeper grasp of the magic of Argentine tango.

Barbara Durr

I have know Susana Miller for almost 8 years. I started intensively taking lessons from Susana in 2004 and from that time Susana has been my primary instructor and mentor. It always amazes me the uncanny ability that Susana has to troubleshoot an individual's dancing and she is able to almost instantly give the individual advice to correct their flaws. Most of the time the changes are subtle but very effective. Since 2005 I have hosted her in Chicago to teach workshops to the Chicago and Midwest community. They have always been well attended and everyone has benefitted. Susana was also very instrumental with the Chicago Mini Tango Festival (www.chicagotangofestival.com). It was because of Susana and Maria Plazaola that we did our first Mini Tango Festival in 2006.

Not only is a very effective teacher but she is also my good friend.

Ray Barbosa

I would like to express my joy and word of thanks for the workshops and extra practica you put together in inviting Susana Miller. Please convey my deep felt appreciation for the time she shared in the sessions.They were eye-opener in many respects for a novice enthusiast like me.

Srinivas Vishnublotta

Susana is a remarkable teacher, not only for her command of the dance, but because she deeply understands how people learn it. She choose to teach "milonguero"because it was what she herself chose to do. In the mid - 1980, when she began to learn tango, there were few tango teachers. But there were milongas - fewer than now, without social cache, and with mainly older dancers. She would say that her greater teacher was the milonga, where she herself stumbled nightly, learning the hard way for five years before she felt she could really dance. Because Susana had taught yoga and studied movement, she began to study the ways in which the older milongueros danced. With an eye toward teaching, she singled out several and worked with them to understand better what they did, and how they did it.The older milongueros didn't teach classes, and that style which predominates in central Bs As where dance floor are crowded, was in jeopardy of being lost as they died or stopped dancing because of age and/or poor health. She began to teach with Cacho Dante, a milonguero who after teaching with Susana for several years now teaches on his own. The rest, as it were, is history.

One of the central characteristics of the milonguero style is rythm, used in very compact step patterns. Susana can make students feel and understand the richness of the rythm in their bones. She reaches into rock n'roll, African drumming and salsa to connect rythms for students. I remember a class with Susana when I was just a beginer several years ago in which she introduced the 1,2,3 pattern that runs thrroughout tango. She made me feel it in a way that has never left my body. Susana was also the first teacher that revealed to me the energy levels that different tango movements have according to the music - other teachers taught steps - She taght steps that had variations in energy in sync with the music and that therefore were communicated to a partner with meaning The dephth of that musicality is the greatest gift she has given to me.

Barabara Durr

I think that the genius of Susana Miller is not only that she has an extraordinriily deep understanding of the music and the moves of tango and that she is able to teach this so well, but that she is able to convey in a way that no other teacher I have encountered is able to do, that feeling, that essence of the dance that is beyond words. How does she do this? Well, therein lies the magic and you will just it to understand it. I have said this to quiet a few people who were about to work with her for the first time, and without exception, they have thanked me afterwards and told me that they agreed.

Leslie Hodges

When I first visited BsAs5 years ago,I had only been taught an open salon style .Being a little slow on the uptake,it took me several days before I finally had the personal epiphany of "I don't know SQUAT about how to dance with a real Argentine!" I've spent last 5 years exploring how to dance and to teach tango"the way they actually do in BsAs".

We just finished a week of workshops with Susana Miller,the well-known teacher of the "milonguero style". It has been my third or fourth encounter with her. Last year I felt she worked very simply, but very deeply. This year she worked very deeply but very complex.

I suspect she didn't change that much as I did.

In tango I discover that the more i know, the more I have to learn. Also I have viewed many different teachers with many different styles over the last 6 years, only a few of them awaken me to really go back and reanalyze fundamentals. Susana Miller is one who makes me star fresh every time I see her. I have seen 3 or 4 really fairly distinct structural methods of teaching a tango lenguage. In this visit,Susana developed an"interesting "lenguage of tango"in the "milonguero style"

Dan Boccia

Gracias por todo, maestra. Las clases en  Albuquerque y en Vancouver han sido excelentes para mi. Tenés razón. Ahora todos los hombres quieren bailar conmigo y aun en la calle me miran de otra forma, (tengo algunos cuentos para ti) .También me da mucho resultado tu metodología con mis alumnos. Les gusta mucho!!

Jenny de Bouzek

Susana Miller , figura emblematica del Tango, con le sue lezioni, aiuta gli allievi a migliorare la postura, l'equilibrio e la marcaciòn. Stimola ognuno di loro a sviluppare uno stile proprio di improvvisazione conoscendo meglio la musica, lo spazio e il corpo. Le sue lezioni, basete sulla camminata ed il ritmo, forniscono un vocabolario coreografico fondamentale che permette ai ballerini di comporre un linguaggio unico e personale.
Seguo Susana da molti anni e credo fermamente nel lavoro che lei svolge, sempre in continua evoluzione, con grande professionalità e intelligenza e ritengo che nel grande caos di Stili e Maestri, Susana Miller sia una figura unica e indispensabile per l'apprendimento, la conoscenza e l'approfondimento del Tango Milonguero.

Nora Rivetti

I chose to go rogue like Susana after my first trip to Bs As, I looked up Susana but she was in Europe at that time. So I went to the only other woman teaching Milonguero there and get my first formal lesson. I came back to San Diego and introduced "the milonguero way".One year later I get a phone from a friend in Kauai asking me if I wanted to host Susana Miller in San Diego, I could not believe my luck!! Susana has become my mentor and my friend as we continue going rogue.

Linda Garwood

Through the last couple of years I have seen announcements for tango workshops. All have been billed as faboulous, fantastic, inimitable. But I do remember that Susana Miller workshops in Vancouver. She unfortunately was here when most of us could not appreciate what she was trying to teach us. It was only a few years later that I finally sank in (at last for me) and I realized what an extrordinary teacher she had been. At the very last ,had I learned a bit more from her,I would have learned to dance on an area no bigger than a toilet seat.

Alex Waterhouse Hayward

I would like to come to Minneapolis for Susana's wekend. (I know that she will be there longer but I can only come for that time). You may not know that Susana and I are very close friends and she is without question the best tango teacher I've ever worked with.

Christopher Nassopoulos

I brought in Susana Miller last year and again next week. I quite like her. Her approach is very internal, not external. She has made it a study of hers to tape, trancribe and teach what the old generation of dancers in BsAs actually do SOCIALLY, as opposed to anything at all like stage. This year she has been teaching material of one particular older fellow, with a lot of traspie and milonga.Susana is a solid professional,from finances to organizing to material to personal conduct.

Tom Stermitz