Meet Your Hosts
The Chicas Buenos Aires Intensive is shaped by a shared belief: tango is not only something you learn in class. It is something you absorb through the body, the music, the floor, the city, and the people who carry it.
This week brings together two worlds: the Chicas del Tango community, created by Yelizaveta, and La Maleva, the Buenos Aires home created by Mariana Dragone.
Together, we are creating a small, focused training experience for women who lead - rooted in technique, musicality, social dancing, and the living culture of Buenos Aires.
Yelizaveta
Yelizaveta is a tango dancer, teacher, DJ, and the founder of IMSO Tango School Online and Chicas del Tango.
Her teaching is built around a simple question: how do we help dancers feel more capable, more musical, and more at home on the social dance floor?
Rather than treating tango as a collection of steps, Yelizaveta teaches it as a living system of movement, music, attention, and choice. Her work often focuses on the practical details that make social dancing feel better: body mechanics, musical timing, floorcraft, connection, adaptability, and the confidence to make clear decisions in real time.
Chicas del Tango grew from this same approach. It is a space for women who want to understand tango more deeply, explore both roles, and develop their leading without losing sensitivity, nuance, or artistry.
For Yelizaveta, this Buenos Aires Intensive is not simply a trip. It is a way to bring women into deeper contact with the dance: through training, community, and the experience of dancing in the city where tango continues to breathe.
Mariana Dragone
Mariana Dragone is a dancer, teacher, performer, and the owner and general manager of La Maleva Casa Hotel in Buenos Aires.
Originally from Rosario, Argentina, Mariana knew from the age of four that she wanted to be a dancer. She began her training at a local dance school and later moved to Buenos Aires at age 20 to immerse herself in tango.
Her professional career grew in Buenos Aires, where she became part of Miguel Ángel Zotto’s renowned Tango x2 Company. Through that work, she toured internationally, taught tango, and performed in exhibitions around the world.
Since 2010, Mariana has co-managed La Maleva Casa Hotel with Mathieu Brossard. For her, La Maleva is not simply a hotel. It is a place where guests can dance, meet people, share mate, and experience Argentine culture from the inside.
Mariana brings to this intensive a lifetime of dance experience, a deep Buenos Aires perspective, and a special gift for helping dancers understand their own bodies through solo technique, movement, and embodied awareness.
Why this collaboration
Yelizaveta first studied with Mariana in Buenos Aires in 2015.
That experience became part of the foundation of Yelizaveta’s own teaching. Mariana’s approach to solo technique, body organization, and embodied clarity continues to influence the way Yelizaveta understands tango movement today.
This intensive brings that connection full circle.
Yelizaveta brings the Chicas del Tango community, the teaching framework, and an understanding of what visiting dancers need in order to feel prepared, supported, and challenged.
Mariana brings the Buenos Aires home base, the local perspective, the space, and the lived knowledge of someone who has spent decades inside the professional and social tango world.
Together, they are creating a week that is structured but not rigid, serious but not intimidating, and rooted in the real experience of dancing tango in Buenos Aires.
