A rgentine Tango Lab started in Vancouver with the idea to become a dance ‘laboratorio’ for all dance lovers who would like to learn the Dance of Embraces, Argentine Tango, in the way is taught in Buenos Aires.

The company was founded in 2011 and since then has been involved in various festivals, shows and events not just in Vancouver, but also in US, Europe and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Gabriel and Maria are offering group classes, private classes and workshops that are held through out the year.

Learn with us:
Argentine Tango is our passion. It’s who we are. Our approach is to share the experience we have and to help each student by personalizing our teaching and adjusting it to each person’s individual needs. We always start with correct and strong fundamentals that will build students confidence and elegance on the dance floor in any milongas. We focus on quality, connection and self expression in dance. It is important for us to create a warm and welcoming atmosphere for our students and, the more they advance, to challenge and encourage them to explore the possibilities in dance. The progress of our students matters to us which is why we carefully prepare our classes to ensure they will clearly understand the material of tango elements, musicality and improvisation. We are also running our weekly guided practica every Sunday to help students to improve their dancing.

We strongly believe that each of us has a dancer inside us. We would love to share our passion with you and guide you on your journey of getting to know Argentine Tango.

Sincerely,
Gabriel & Maria

The Bandoneon

By the end of the 19th Century there were accordions, concertinas and bandoneons, exported from
Germany to the whole world.
The accordions were more popular in France and Italy (called fisarmonicas). There were some
accordions with a piano keyboard on the right side, called piano-accordion. British people adopted
the concertina in one English version, smaller than the German instrument.

The factory that produced bandoneons, owned by Zimmerman, was bought in the 1860’s by Ernest
Louis Arnold, and since the beginning of the 20th Century most of his bandoneons (ELA) and the
ones made by his son Alfred Arnold (AA) were exported to Argentina, with the name of bandoneon.

At that time a new dance was born, with the name of Tango, and it grows with the special sound of
the bandoneon. You can play any kind of music with the bandoneon, but it is the most famous
instrument to play tango. The real tango is identified by the sound of the bandoneon.
All the typical structures of tango groups include this instrument.
Duo: bandoneon and piano, or bandoneon and acoustic guitar. Trio: bandoneon, piano or guitar,
and double bass. Quartet: bandoneon, piano, violin, bass. The Quintet adds a guitar or another
violin.
The traditional or typical tango orchestras in Argentina used four bandoneons and four violins in
addition to piano and bass.
The fusion of bandoneon with string quartet in chamber music is excellent.
My favorite ensemble is the combination of the basic trio plus a string quartet, that means:
bandoneon, piano, bass, 1st violin, 2nd violin, viola and cello.

The current bandoneon is known also as argentine bandoneon, in spite of the fact that there are no
bandoneons manufactured in Argentina. After the Second World War, the Arnold’s factory was
forced to change its production, the need for pieces of diesel engines was more important than
the double A’s, and no more bandoneons of that quality were constructed since.

I consider the bandoneon to be the most difficult instrument to learn. I do not mean to master it;
most of the musical instruments require a lot of effort to reach expertise. I set out just to learn how
to play it.
In the most common configuration the right hand contains 38 buttons and the left hand has 33,
totalizing 71 buttons.

There is no rule or pattern to follow the scales in the bandoneon layout of the notes; they are located
totally at random, like the letters in a typewriter.
It implies that just to learn the location of the notes in the two keyboards it is necessary to remember
142 different positions (71 buttons with one sound opening and another different 71 closing the
bellows).

The left hand goes chromatically from C2 to A4, almost 3 octaves. The right hand covers another 3
octaves, all the sounds from A3 to B6.
The music scores for the bandoneon are the same as the piano parts, the left hand reads F clef,
and the right hand reads G clef.
David Alsina