Naples Tango and I just celebrated our first anniversary at our Holiday Party,
last Thursday, December 17. It was a wonderful party, with about 40 guests - a great turnout considering that there were dozens of other holiday parties going on in the Naples area that evening, and considering how young the Naples Tango community is!
Yes, it's been just a year. I arrived in Naples in November 2008, after 20 years in Umbria, Italy, so happy to be finally reunited with my mother. I immediately started looking for a dance studio in which to start working. On December 21, I registered the domain "naplestango.com" and published my first post, and the following day I taught my first Introductory Demo class at the Fred Astaire Studio in Naples. Two months later, I went out on my own.
Many people have asked me how I started dancing and teaching tango, and why I left Italy to come back to the U.S. So, feeling sentimental about my 1st anniversary back in the US, I'll tell you the short version of
My Tango Story:
Nearly 22 years ago, upon discovering that I had been nominated for a VP position in a major investment bank on Wall Street, instead of jumping for joy, I felt my heart contract. In climbing the corporate ladder, I had neglected a big part of my soul! Though I'd had outstanding training in drawing and sculpture in college and in a great NY art school, I eventually chose a corporate career because I “never wanted to be a waitress again”. My New York life was frenetic and, naturally, in the banking world it was essential to keep your emotions tightly under control. Besides the absence of natural, heartfelt, human expression, there was certainly no "platform" in this environment for the deep artistic expression that I craved.
So in 1988 I declined the VP nomination and left Wall Street to pursue my dream of starting a residential. . .
To read the rest of the story CLICK HERE.
