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Tango Performance

 

See a Performance
Aug. 7-8 - Dance Place

 

Funded in part by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Press inquiries:
Sharna Fabiano, .

Artistic Director

Sharna Fabiano is Executive Director of Tango Mercurio and Artistic Director of its performing ensemble, Sharna Fabiano Tango Company. She has a background of classical and modern dance and began her life as a tanguera in 1997. She has been educated in several traditional social dance styles by some of the greatest names in the modern Tango Renaissance, and is regarded as an innovator who has remained connected to the tango's roots while exploring its ever-changing modern aesthetics and vocabulary.

From 1999-2002, Sharna worked in Boston as a member of the innovative company Bridge to the Tango, founded by tango historian and revivalist Daniel Trenner. She traveled several times to Buenos Aires to study and absorb the rich culture of tango, and directed a tango school in Boston, MA, coordinating a team of local instructors and monthly guest artists. She appeared in several instructional tango videos and visited Cuba twice to teach and perform as part of a US-licensed cultural exchange.

In 2003, Sharna relocated to Washington, DC and joined the internationally acclaimed TangoMujer, an all-woman tango dance company based in NYC. She created several original works for TangoMujer and performed at the prestigious Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, in NYC, DC, San Francisco, Berlin, Dusseldorf, and Hamburg, Germany. In 2005, her first solo choreography was commissioned by the Auros Group for New Music in Cambridge, MA.

In 2006, she established Sharna Fabiano Tango Company in Washington, DC and in recent years has danced at the Argentine Embassy, Lisner Auditorium, and Kennedy Center. She has produced two evening-length shows at Dance Place, and contributed work to the Dance DC Festival, DC Improv Festival, and Hispanic Festival. In 2008, Sharna was featured as an emerging artist in Dance magazine, the Washingtonian, and Dance/USA Journal. Her fusion work "Uno," a collaboration with composer Glover Gill, was selected for the Festival Cambalache in Buenos Aires.

Among her most influential teachers she counts Daniel Trenner, Rebecca Shulman, Brigitta Winkler, Juan Bruno, Pedro "Tete" Rusconi, Graciela Gonzalez, Gustavo Naveira, Mariano "Chicho" Frumboli, and Pablo Veron. Her own teaching is characterized by a clear, articulate knowledge of body movement, and by a great depth of understanding of tango improvisation. Sharna has traveled as a guest artist to dozens of cities in North America and Europe, and her written articles on the depth and mystique of social tango have been widely read and translated into several languages. She continues to complement her tango training by studying modern dance, yoga, and body alignment.

Listen to a podcast interview with Sharna at Kadmus Arts.