 "Photo: Shelley Neuman; The Daily Texan")
When the notoriously raucous Church of the Friendly Ghost music venue vacated its original location in 2005, the fate of the charming church on 209 Pedernales St. was uncertain.
Uncertainty led to what has been called a “labor of love” by the church’s newest attendees: tango students.
In January 2007, Monica Caivano, an Argentinean-born dancer, launched her vision in the East Austin community.
Her vision was Esquina Tango, a dance studio with a holistic approach to teaching the art of tango, one that would include a cultural as well as a technical dance education.
Caivano’s tango center would also offer wellness classes, such as yoga and morning walking groups, a distinctive youth outreach program.
“I’ve always been involved in the arts all my life and when I was little,” Caivano said. “Dance and theater have always been my passions.”
Caivano is explicit in her wishes that money is never to come between potential students and their desire to learn. She stressed that she will work with anyone to devise a payment plan or an exchange of work for lessons.
“It’s part of my belief system,” Caivaro said. “With theater and dance, I’ve always just loved people and community and making things accessible.”
Caivano said she’s always in need of volunteers, whom she’ll happily repay with dancing lessons. After all, it was volunteerism that led to the complete renovation of the church.
Esquina Tango is now a pop of red and purple on an otherwise neutrally colored street. Tom Kamrath headed reconstruction efforts and now regularly attends tango lessons at the center. Kamrath said that he and other construction-savvy students intentionally laid the floor with bamboo because of its eco-friendly properties. Kamrath was inspired after meeting Caivano for the first time at another dance workshop in Austin.
“She’s a really unique girl. She has a great love for dance and for people, and it just really shows,” Kamrath said.
Between the eco-consciousness, youth outreach, Spanish conversation classes, donated labor and a policy of non-refusal due to lack of ability to pay, it seems there is no aspect of Esquina Tango that is without heart. That fuzzy feeling is precisely what keeps student Miki Riquelme coming back week after week.
“This place has spirit,” Riquelme said, referring to the differences between Esquina Tango and other dance studios in Austin. He amiably refers to the “spirit” as “the ghosts of tango,” a nod to the church’s former life as a lively, vanguard music joint.
While the sense of community is precisely what Caivano was striving for, she is far from complacent.
“Something I’d like for the future of Esquina Tango is growing the nonprofit aspect, to applying for grants and scholarships for youth and the women’s programs, so that angle we have is not fully developed yet,” Caivano said.
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