UniTango Instructors
Fiona Foster & Nick Jones
Fiona knows that “to be fond of dancing is a certain step towards falling in love.” She half-hails from a land of petticoats and pettifogging, where dancing tango is social capitol. It used to be the Minuet and the Fish Slapping Dance, but those recently went out of fashion. When not at tango, you can find her inadvisably tromping through fields in a lovely dress, playing tango violin, reading anthropology stuff, and hosting a radio show about stuff on KGNU. But not all at the same time. In the days of yore, she was the second president of the CU Tango Club,
Nick Jones is just a “hoofer with a spare set of tails.” These he keeps in the Library for
emergencies along with his Victrola, his ’78 RPM records, his Magic Lantern Projector, a Davis &
Kidder’s Electric Machine for Nervous Diseases, and—in pride of place—a 1683 copy of De
Rerum Natura. One might say he’s a man from another age. If he’d ever seen the movie Kate
and Leopold, he’d compare himself to Hugh Jackman. One of his greatest pleasures in life is
“putting is feet on the ground and moving them around,” often to tango music.
Together, Fiona and Nick, like two Tango Planeteers, have combined their powers into a
Voltron of Mystery, Sensuality, & Musicality.
John Miller & Jesica Cutler
John Miller and Jesica Cutler have been dancing, teaching, and performing together since 2013 and in that time have developed a style that is engaging, fun, and informative. Jesica’s profound knowledge of anatomy and John’s deep analysis of Tango structure make for classes that are clear, concise, and insightful. Together they are charming, funny, and a delightful couple. They have taught together at Tango festivals in the US and Mexico, including Tango on the Rocks, the Wasatch Tango Festival, Mountain Milonga Retreat, the Baja EcoTango Festival, Tree City Tango in Boise, and the Boulder Tango Festival. John and Jesica are the organizers of Tango on the Rocks, Denver’s most popular festival.
Cindy Giannini & Vanessa Stephan
Tango was a perfect fit for Cynthia’s love of music and dance discipline that followed a fifteen year career with the Joffrey Ballet. Cynthia experineced excellence in choreography, stage design, live orchestras and theatre, in her ballet life, and brings that attention to detail and quality of movement to her work in tango as a dancer, teacher and choreographer.
It is her love of the music that inspires the feelings she wants to share by the way she incorporates and expresses it in her movement and with her partner in dance.
Cynthia was the 2017 US Champion of Stage tango. She represented the US in Buenos Aires that same year in the semifinals of the Mundial de Tango. She is excited to compete in 2023 with Vanessa Stephan.
To her, the most extraordinary discovery in tango is the intimacy it offers within yourself, your partner and the shared feelings in the dance driven by the music.
Cynthia has created Intimo Tango, where she shares her passion through, teaching, performance and community building. She is currently working on a documentary series, “21st Century Tango”, where she is exposing her extraordinary experinces with the people, places and intimate connections she has had the gift to encounter in her tango life.
Vanessa fell in love with partner dancing back in 2004 and began pursuing every dance style and avenue available to her from Ballroom, Lindy Hop, and Blues, to Tango, WCS, and Fusion. She taught Ballroom for a number of years in both a studio and university setting, and from the very beginning, she was interested in both the leader and a follower's perspective.
The richness of what dance can teach us about an endless range of relational concerns fascinated her: communication, expectation, structure, flexibility, play, limitation. Eventually, Tango subsumed her focus with it's depth of connection and seduced her with it's demanding technical precision, so in 2014, Vanessa moved to Boulder with a firm resolve to learn Tango in a granular, soul consuming way and largely succeeded. She became first a Teaching Assistant and then an Instructor for Gustavo Naveira and Giselle Anne at their Boulder Tango Studio - a prestigious role which had not previously existed. There she gained a deep understanding of the structure, technique, and responsibility of dancing with another person and broadened her teaching style. Vanessa is now known in the community for her depth of knowledge in the area of Tango technique.
Vanessa's second greatest love has always been teaching. In fact, scant are the times in her life when she wasn't involved in teaching something. Teaching isn't only about conveying information. It's about patience, strategy, creativity, and listening. To understand someone's question is to understand their way of thinking which is a kind of window into their world view. People come to dance for different reasons and with different values, and imparting something valuable to them is the endlessly exciting job of the teacher.
Vanessa has been enthusiastically expanding beyond teaching into the world of performance and choreography with her dance partner Cynthia Giannini with whom she will compete in 2023. Together they create events and shows which have brought the community together.