Festival Teachers

Internationally recognized for their unique style, Octavio Fernández and Carolina Giannini represent the perfect fusion between the tradition of Argentine tango and a contemporary vision. Their dancing is a symphony of elegance, precision, and emotion, where impeccable technique and musicality meet with an intimate and profound connection that transcends the stage.

As influential teachers, they stand out for their innovative and accessible approach that enhances their students' personal development, combining respect for the roots of tango with modern tools. In each class and show, they convey not only technique, but also the essence and passion that make tango an unforgettable experience.

Octavio and Carolina inspire dancers from around the world, bringing their art and teaching to international stages and festivals, where they are recognized for keeping the authenticity of tango alive while propelling it toward new generations. Elegance, sensitivity, and connection are the hallmarks of this couple, whose commitment to tango continues to leave its mark with every step.

Rino and Graziella met in 2010 and started dancing together with the aim of using their partnership to facilitate their growth in tango, as a couple and as individuals. They had both danced other dances at a professional level, but chose tango for its greater interpretive freedom in movement and musical expression. The discipline and training that they brought from other dances have helped them to deepen their mastery of technical elements, and to research and elaborate their own teaching method.

Graziella started dancing at age 3. After two years of preparatory ballet, she dedicated herself to synchronized swimming, winning numerous championships. She started dancing couple dances at age 9 and discovered tango at age 17. She has been studying with Argentine teachers since 2003, and has visited Buenos Aires yearly since 2007. In 2008, she achieved the World Tango Championship Final.

Rino began dancing at age 10, specializing in ballroom dances. He won his first Italian Championship in 1998, and since then, has maintained a national and international career. He competed in England , Austria , Belgium , Poland , Russia , Lithuania and Spain, winning numerous competitions. He became a professional and also a Fids specialist, leaving competing to become a judge. During a competition, he met Graziella, and they began a couple in life and in tango. He drew on all his previous dance experience to quickly refine and personalize his tango technique.

Together, Rino & Graziella teach around Italy, and preside over the En Tus Brazos association with locations in Catania and Salerno. Their goal has teachers is to deepen the technical evolution of tango through lessons and practice sessions that help everyone create their best tango. Rino & Graziella continue to study deepen their knowledge, including many seminars with Chicho Frumboli and Juana Sepulveda and Gustavo Naveira and Giselle Anne. They organize Catania Summer Tango Week, among other events, and have participated as teachers and performers at various national and international tango events throughout Europe, Asia and the United States. They are the creators and choroegraphers of the tango theater show, “Which Tango Are you?”

Pablo Garcia Gomez and Iwona Ionescu hold masters in education, and they both have many years of teaching experience. They have studied Argentine tango with various master teachers from Argentina and from around the world. Pablo and Iwona teach at the Princeton Adult School, and at Princeton’s Viva Tango, where they are currently artists in residence.

Check out this video compilation of Pablo & Iwona's classes.

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Andres Amarilla began dancing tango in 1987 at age 11. While still a child, he studied with and performed in the dance companies of three of the greatest tangueros of all time: Gustavo Naveira, Juan Carlos Copes, and Rodolfo Dinzel. After 10 years of intensive immersion in the music, culture and movement of traditional Argentine Tango, Andres became part of a small group of young people seeking to push the limits of the traditional art form. Together, they analyzed and codified the movements, sequences and rules of traditional tango and began to play with the “grammar” of the tango language, thereby developing uncounted new sequences of movements, and giving birth to a new means of teaching, dancing and thinking about tango. This way of analyzing tango has become the basis of most good tango pedagogy in the world today.

Andres’s dance is characterized by the rich variety of material that he accesses in improvisation due both to an extraordinarily efficient lead and to an extreme precision of movement. Rather than seeking simple technical brilliance, Andres puts all of this technique and vocabulary to use to create a dance that possesses musical richness, responding to the subtleties of each orchestra with great understanding and feeling.

A greatly sought-after teacher, Andres has taught in more than 70 cities worldwide, including Istanbul, Beirut, Warsaw, Gdansk, Moscow, Sydney, Brisbane, Belo Horizonte, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Vancouver, Montreal, and New York, among many others. In 2008, Andres and his dance partner, Meredith Klein, founded the Philadelphia Argentine Tango School. These days, Andres splits his year between Philadelphia and the world, as he continues to travel worldwide to teach & perform.

Olesya Kershaw started dancing in Kiev, Ukraine, in 2011, and has been attending tango festivals and milongas around the world since then. She joined our tango community in Philadelphia this year, and it has been enriched by her presence. She is known for her beautiful adornments, exceptional musicality and elegant lines.

Born in Mar del Plata, province of Buenos Aires, Ignacio Ondartz began studying tango in 2000 in his hometown with Julio Valdez, the most important referent for tango dance in the city. After studying and performing in Mar del Plata for four years, he moved to Buenos Aires to deepen his work in tango. He performed, taught and DJed for years, while simultaneously working in his other profession of Industrial Design. In 2023, he received his first P-3 artist visa and began to teach in the U.S., at the Philadelphia Argentine Tango School.

Just a few months later, in March 2024, Ignacio suffered a hemorrhagic stroke that nearly killed him. Over the past two years, he has had to re-learn everything, from how to breathe and swallow, to how to walk and talk, to how to dance. In January 2025, Ignacio gave his first performance again after the stroke. Tango has been a significant factor in the speed of Ignacio's recovery and the extent to which he has been able to recover. It is therefore even more meaningful to him to be able to teach, DJ, and perform at this year’s festival.

Meredith Klein has been dancing tango for 27 years, including three years spent living in Buenos Aires. Meredith directs the Philadelphia Argentine Tango School (since 2008), the Philadelphia Tango Festival (since 2010), Milonga Tours (offering tango tours of Buenos Aires for dancers since 2009), and the tango record label Bochinche Records (since 2023). Before tango, Meredith came from a background in music, and has made it her life’s mission to help tango dancers and tango musicians understand each other a little better. Her Bochinche Records has released three albums, received a Latin Grammy nomination, and recently released Icónico y Barrial, the first triple album by a single artist in tango history.

Meredith has taught and performed in more than 40 cities worldwide, including Istanbul, Sydney and Byron Bay (Australia), Gdansk and Brzeg (Poland), Belo Horizonte (Brazil), Beirut (Lebanon), Nicosia (Cyprus), Vancouver and Montreal (Canada), and more than 30 cities in the United States.

Like many tango dancers, Meredith is fascinated by the transformative potential of tango. When we arrive completely into the moment, in our own body, present with another person, and indeed, with an entire roomful of people (i.e. when we dance tango), magic and healing happen. She is thrilled to help more people access this magic through all the projects that she directs.

In 2024, she started a dance partnership with Ignacio Ondartz, from Mar del Plata, Argentina, who has lived in Buenos Aires for twenty years. He is an extraordinary tango dancer, and literally the very best milonga dancer in the entire world, except perhaps Octavio Fernandez.

In July 2024, Meredith became one of very few foreigners in the world to be named an Honorary Academic of the National Academy of Tango in Buenos Aires, a program of the Argentine Ministry of Culture and Department of Education. She is overwhelmed by this unexpected honor.

Matías Mauricio is a teacher, poet, editor, and a reference in current tango lyrics. He is a member of the National Academy of Tango and the Academia Porteña del Lunfardo, a member of the CETBA (Tango Education Center of Buenos Aires), and a researcher of the Tango Department of the Centro Cultural de la Cooperación. He works as a teacher in the Tango Diploma of the UBA (Faculty of Economic Sciences) in charge of the contemporary Tango chair, and of the Poetics of Tango I and II and Lyricists chairs of CETBA.

He has published the books: Bandoneón Blindado (2010), Julián Centeya: biography and unpublished poems co-authored with Roberto Selles (2014) and Homero Expósito: unpublished sonnets (2018), Tango post-2001: social outbreak and new poetics (2022). He writes regularly for El Cohete a la Luna. Among other distinctions, he was the winner of the “Hugo del Carril” Award for best tango song (2013), he works as a lecturer and jury in different tango contests, festivals, and contests in Argentina and abroad.

Amelia Foss is a tango and folklore dancer based in Princeton, NJ. She became enchanted with the rich artistry of Argentine folklore in 2016, and ever since has learned about these beautiful dances through the inspiration and generosity of teachers and musicians around the world. Amelia is excited to share this knowledge with new dancers as a gateway to begin exploring the rich and diverse world of Argentine folklore.