Mission & Goals
Staff & Volunteers
Board of Directors
Friends of Mercurio
Contacting Us
Contributions
Annual Report 09-10
Board of Directors
Layla Kassem, President
Michael McElroy, Treasurer
Michael is a CPA who consults with small businesses in the Washington area. His areas of specialization are small business accounting and taxation. He has been dancing tango for five years, and has had the good fortune to dance in many countries and learn from many interesting teachers. His tango style is pretty much old-school milonguero with a deep respect for the traditions of the dance.
Marla Bush, Secretary
Marla Bush recently fell in love with Tango, and with Tango Mercurio. The
soulfulness of Tango echoes the "duende" of Flamenco, which she has performed
for over 25 years with the Spanish Dance Theater and the Raquel Pena dance
troupe. Dance venues have included everything from folk festivals, nursing
homes, school outreach programs to the Kennedy Center and the Museum of Natural
History in New York. A highlight has been performing with the great Jose Greco.
She has also taught Flamenco in Washington, DC and in Florida.
As a Teaching Artist for Arts for the Aging, Marla leads La Movida, an interactive Spanish dance program. This makes a nice connection with her "day job" at the Administration on Aging, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where she has developed projects that use the arts with healthy and frail elderly.
Sharna Fabiano, Founding/Artistic Director
Sharna is one of the most accomplished Tango artists in the United States. An internationally renown teacher and performer, she has also made significant contributions to the recent Tango Renaissance in the United States as a producer of tango classes, workshops, and performances for more than a decade. Her goal in founding Tango Mercurio in 2008 was to facilitate the collaboration of instructors, performers, and social dancers on creative projects that would enrich both the existing tango community and the greater urban community in which they live. In 2011, she re-located to Los Angeles. To learn more about Sharna's current work, please visit www.sharnafabiano.com
Tom Kenney, Live Music
Enrique Bravo
Kathleen Golden
Kathleen Golden is the president and founder of The Golden Image, a national communications firm. Kathleen has been helping young professionals and senior executives achieve their goals for over twelve years. Kathleen received her BA in French and Psychology from Marquette University and her Masters in Education from Boston University. She received her Certification in Image Consulting from the London Image Institute and is also a certified crisis counselor.
Kathleen is a certified leadership coach from Georgetown University.
Kathleen's background includes serving as President of the Board of Directors of the Crisis Center of Dallas, Vice President and Executive Director of the Greater Dallas Planning Council, an organization of prominent business leaders in Dallas. She served as President of the Board of the William Wendt Center for Loss and Healing in DC. She was Co-founder of Golden Lamb Ventures, a fashion consulting business and Co-founder and teacher of a bi-lingual Montessori School in Puerto Rico. Kathleen is multilingual and has traveled extensively - attending state functions with diplomats, dignitaries, and heads of states. More recently, Kathleen has devoted a significant percentage of her time to helping college students and young professionals launch their careers. (NYU, KIPP Academy). She finds this work challenging and rewarding.
Nancy Hirschhorn
Nancy works on international trade for the Foreign Agricultural Service, USDA. She started dancing tango in the mid-1990s, discovering an introductory weekend offered by Daniel Trenner and Rebecca Shulman, who organized "Puente al Tango" trips to Buenos Aires. She joined their 1996 trip and has returned to Buenos Aires several times. She is thankful for the work of early DC event organizers, including the late Bette Runge and Mary Pat Cooney, who brought many talented instructors to the DC area before there was a well-established community.
An avid traveler, she has enjoyed connecting with tango communities in several U.S. cities, Auckland, Bologna, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Mexico City, Montreal, Paris, Santiago, Sydney, Venice, and other cities. She has been a volunteer editor for the Capital Tangueros newsletter for several years. She has enjoyed participating in the vibrant, ever-evolving DC tango community. Nancy looks forward to expanding Tango Mercurio's outreach activities and fostering future growth of tango in Washington.
Gus Hurwitz
Gus has danced all of his life, starting when he was about two feet tall as a competitive ice skater, with ballet and ballroom dance as part of his training. Through college he was one of his school's ballroom and swing dance instructors. In the early years of this millenium, he discovered Argentine Tango while living in Santa Fe, NM, and since making that discovery tango has become the only dance in his life. He first learned to tango from David Cohen (an acolyte of Daniel Trenner), then worked with Somer and Agape in Chicago, and most recently with Isaac and Sharna in Washington, DC.
Gus particularly enjoys using unexpected variations to tell jokes to whomever he is dancing with. In his non-tango life, he is a government antitrust lawyer; publishes papers on a variety of legal topics; cooks foodstuffs using sugar, fat, and chocolate; climbs rocks; and is active in his local community.
Suzanne Perry
Suzanne began dancing Argentine tango in 1997, as a welcome break during law school. Since then, her tango experience has been marked by times of intense, focused study and other times when tango is less central - an occasional creative outlet. Over the years, she has studied the dance (and culture) with accomplished teachers both in DC and Buenos Aires, hosted teachers, organized classes for women to study leading, and helped provide music at the library practica.
Suzanne's basic philosophy is that, while Argentine tango is firmly rooted in its past, it is an onging (and constantly-evolving) creative conversation. Everyone - whether young, mature, shy, outgoing, a beginner, a seasoned regular or slightly-out-of-practice - has something to contribute to that discussion. The discussion grows more vibrant with each voice added, so her hope is that Tango Mercurio can continue making tango accessible and enjoyable to dancers of all backgrounds, skills and comfort levels.
Zara Sarzin
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Many thanks to previous board members Selena Caldera, William Ramos, Cynthia Schoeppel, and Victoria Wood