We were lucky to catch up with Daniela Borgialli recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Daniela thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I was 8 years old and I announced to my mother that I wanted to be a choreographer. Although the path wasn’t linear by any means, and definitely not encouraged, I have managed to be a teacher, dancer, choreographer, performer for the bulk of my career.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I wanted to be a dancer and choreographer since I was a little girl. As life took its meandering path through undergrad in Boston, living in New York City twice, living in San Francisco and Arizona, and returning to the Boston area I decided on graduate school at Arizona State University where I received an MFA in Dance & Choreography. While studying dance and dreaming of becoming that choreographer in New York City, I stumbled into an Argentine Tango class. My love of movement lead me to classes in somatics and alignment. Even before grad school I took several classes in anatomy for dancers and my modern dance mentor was a fabulous technician. After grad school I received a certification in a biomechanical model of alignment from Katy Bowman of Nutritious Movement(TM) in Restorative Exercise.
So my love of movement reached deeply into the how’s and why’s of human movement.
Argentine Tango soon became my central focus. This is my 24th year of teaching Argentine Tango. I have continued to travel and teach internationally and was proudly the first teacher of an academically acredited course in Argentine Tango at ASU for more than 10 years. I created the syllabus and taught more than 100 students each year to dance tango.
In 2012 I was the sub-champion in the US Argentine Tango Salon competition in San Francisco. I have competed in 5 Tango Salon championships in the US and Argentina.
My students value my classes for their step by step approach. I teach Argentine Tango from a lens of a technician and from a wholistic perspective. My goal is to get my students to dance socially and with ease and joy. As one of my students recently said that I teach tango with a strong foundation and not through routines but through puzzle pieces.
I founded the International Argentine Tango Academy in January this year as a place for genuine study of Argentine Tango. The benefits of Tango are far-reaching and I wanted a place to anchor my curriculum, create a flourishing community, and to share tango with people of all ages. I wish to grow the Academy as a true place for play, study, growth, nurturing and community, to bring Argentina to the US via the dance, the music, and the culture, celebrating Argentine Tango as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as listed by UNESCO.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

One of the most rewarding aspects of being an artist is sharing my gifts. As a teacher of dance I love seeing students have their ah-A moments! I love taking them on a journey and watching them flourish into dancers, into people who can share their dance within community and with other people internationally. I have opened the doors to people’s careers, to travel, to places they probably never would have gone if they had not started to dance. I enjoy meeting people, traveling to new places, and how inspiring it is to be able to share dance in a culture so different than my own even without being able to communicate through language.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

What if dance, music, art was a requirement for every person? What if picking up crayons, playing with clay, painting pictures, singing songs, dancing to music never stopped? That embedded in the culture was a rich curriculum and tradition that didn’t stop after kindergarten. What if every human was given access to their innate creative abilities early on and it never stopped? How magical!

Contact Info:

• Website: accesstango.com and aziata.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielaborgialli/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/intlargentinetangoacademy
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/danielaborgialli

Image Credits
Christopher Zaleski