Tango with Graeme Clark

Graeme and Jimena on Halloween in Mexico

Graeme Clark began taking social dance classes at the University of Oregon. As his interest for dance grew he joined the university ballroom dance club and after having sampled a variety of dances Argentine tango was the dance that most captured his attention. When Graeme and Jimena met he shared his love with dance and especially the tango with her. Dance has been a big part of their relationship and continues to be an important part of their life together.

Graeme became very active when learning tango and performed as an assistant to his primary teacher, Elizabeth Wartluft while attending the university. He has also taken workshop and group classes with several teachers of renown including Luciana Valle, Daniel Trenner, Cristopher Nassopoulos and Caroline Pettie, Carlos Riverola, Alex Krebs, and various other international teachers. Jimena also took classes in Portland and Mexico and taken group and private lessons with Luciana Valle.

Jimena and Graeme began teaching together in 2003 which they held during more than three years while living in Mexico. They began giving classes in tango as a social dance and establishing a tango community in Queretaro. In addition to maintaining beginner, intermediate, and advanced tango groups during over three years they also helped host events with visiting teachers.

In order to promote their classes they established an informative web page, tangoqueretaro.com which still exists to this day as a contribution to the ongoing tango activities in Queretaro. The same social dances that they set up through the cultural center have continued on and some of their more persistent students have now give classes of their own.

Having moved back to Oregon, Jimena proceeded to get her Master’s in education and was immediately hired as an educator (a Spanish teacher) at a local high school. In addition to establishing an art gallery in Gold Hill along with his brother, Graeme has been investing an increasing amount of energy teaching dance again and providing a venue with dancing on Fridays and every other Saturday in Gold Hill.