Luciana Valle

Luciana began dancing tango in the early nineties. Her teachers included Gustavo Naveira, Fabián Salas, Pepito Avellaneda, Mingo Pugliese, Graciela González and Mariano “Chicho” Frúmboli, among others. Her remarkable skills have put her in the center of the current tango revival. Between 1995 and 1997, she collaborated with Gustavo Naveira and Fabian Salas in a project which created a language for the tango dance.

Throughout this time, she taught classes and performed in several private and public institutions in Buenos Aires including universities, cultural centers, restaurants and Tango Saloons. In 1996 she took her first professional tour to Brazil, where she performed various exhibitions and shows in addition to teaching classes. She also taught in Ecuador.

In 1998 Luciana started working with renowned teachers and dancers Valencia Batiuk and Dina Martinez to establish a permanent group dedicated to the research and study of tango dance.

In 1999 Luciana started traveling to the US. As a distinguished teacher with extensive knowledge of tango, her prestige soon flourished. Since then, the demand for her expertise has boomed and she now tours the country regularly, with a following of enthusiastic students spanning from San Francisco to Boston and from Tampa to Seattle.

In 2002 Luciana also worked as a choreographer in association with the Opus Chamber Orchestra of the Salt Lake City Opera, directing the choreography for their production of Astor Piazzola’s Maria de Buenos Aires.

More recently she has added Europe (Spain, England, and Italy) as one of her regular destinations, where she has had a similar influence to that she had in the US and Argentina.

In addition to her teaching career, Luciana is also very successful as a dancer. She has had numerous performances and shows at different Tango events in Buenos Aires and abroad. She also dances in National and International Tango Festivals and Congresses.

Already considered to be one of the most important Tango teachers in the world, Luciana made another breakthrough in the beginning of 2004 when she created, with Dina Martinez and Valencia Batiuk, El Motivo Tango. Out of the idea of creating a space dedicated to tango dance, El Motivo has revitalized the tradition of Tango Practices in Buenos Aires by creating a place for practice and dance without the formality of the milonga. Not long after its inception, El Motivo was consolidated as a tango school. Providing instruction for beginners as well as professional dancers who come to the thematic special seminars, today El Motivo is a symbol of the new Tango in Buenos Aires.

As part of El Motivo, Luciana has organized many important Tango events. Besides the milonga with live orchestras (which included names such as Los Reyes del Tango, Color Tango, Narcotango and Fernandez Fierro, among others), she has been part of every major Tango Festival throughout the last few years, teaching and dancing in different parts of Argentina.

Since 2005, she has been part of the Festival de Tango Joven, organized by Argentina’s Secretary of National Culture. As part of this project, her school teaches classes and seminars, and Luciana participates in shows all over the country. She is also part of the regular staff of teachers for the Festival de Tango de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. During the World’s Tango Championship in 2006 she directed the show NOTANTANGO?, an original show created by El Motivo specially for the event. This big show explores the dialogue between tango, murga, swing and break dancing.

In 2005 Luciana collaborated with Dance of the Heart to create and organize a special program allowing groups of students from all over to come and study with her in Buenos Aires. As part of these Tango Intensivo seminars in Buenos Aires, the students met with her five hours a day for a week. With the number of participants growing every time, the Intensivos soon started to offer different levels and subjects, and became available two or three times a year.

In 2007 Luciana became part of the staff of teachers and dancers of the Congreso Internacional de Tango Argentino (CITA), one of the most important tango events in the world.