Homer and Cristina both started their tango obsession in 1997. Each brings with them over a dozen years of social dance experience emphasizing a fusion of tango ideologies, via the 'one tango' philosophy. As teachers, they are committed to creating a positive class environment and try to reduce barriers that may inhibit students from really finding their own dance!

Homer is a founding member of the non-profit Project Tango organization, whose biggest local projects include the weekly CELLspace alternative milonga and the Tango Exchange. He is currently an active board member in charge of live music development and grant sponsorship.

Mario "Swing Daddy" Robau started dancing at the age of sixteen. He won the Southwest Regional title for the first time at the age of seventeen and began teaching professionally in 1986. For the last twenty years, Mario has traveled at least 40 weekends per year judging, teaching, DJing, and MCing at various dance workshops and conventions throughout the United States and Canada in the swing, country western, and shag dance circuits. Mario's Competitive credentials include: 2 time U.S. Open Classic swing dance champion; U.S. Open Team Champion and co-choreographer; 10 time Dallas Dance champion; 6 time Southwest Regional champion; 10 time Texas State champion; 10+ City Houston Championships; undefeated slow whip champion; 4 time Grand National Champion; 2 time Phoenix Jack and Jill Champion; Dallas Dance Hall of Fame; Youngest person inducted into Swing Dance Hall of Fame.

A veteran dance performer with numerous stage and production credits. Deborah Székely (Saykay) uses high energy and power to create a unique and forceful Swing Dance performance. A 5-time U.S. Open Swing Dance Champion,4x NASDE Champion and Dallas Dance Hall of Famer. Deborah has technique and ability accumulated and refined over 25 years of teaching and performing Ballet, Jazz, Tap and now Swing. She is also a powerful force to be reckoned with in the Invitational and Strictly Swing categories, continually winning or placing near the top.

Deborah brings a phenomenal style and presence to social and competitive West Coast Swing. Deborah's natural creative talents and years of training make her a remarkable instructor with the ability to easily relate the technique for mastering difficult moves and syncopations with ease in group and private lessons

Amanda has been dancing since age five. Experienced in dance instruction, choreography, performance, and show production, she has taught blues dance, lindy hop, jazz, ballet, tap, lyrical dance, sacred dance, and hip hop. She has also had instruction in other dance forms such as Argentine tango, flamenco, modern dance, popping/breaking, and ballroom dance. Amanda started blues dancing with Ogden Sawyer in 2000, and teaching and judging blues dance with Ogden nationally in 2003.

Shawn Hershey came from an extensive music background, studying classical trumpet performance at the Eastman School of Music, so when he started lindy hopping in the late 1990s with the Lindybaby studio, he quickly got hooked! He has studied extensively at camps and workshops with nationally renowned instructors and started teaching swing and lindy hop in Boston around 2002 with various partners. Shawn began teaching and performing lindy hop internationally with his sister, Betina Hershey.

Since Shawn and Amanda joined forces in 2005, they have collectively won or placed in half a dozen national blues competitions, and have taught and performed together at workshops and events around North America, including Austin Blues Party, Down Home Blues, and BluesSHOUT! Their style of blending lindy hop, ballroom, blues, and Argentine tango into their dancing is both beautiful and powerful, and earns them praise wherever they go.

Currently, Amanda and Shawn teach with a collective of Boston dance instructors at the It's All Swing! Dance Studio and Blues Union Boston, and Shawn runs two successful swing bands, The Fried Bananas and the Shawn Hershey Quartet.

Shawn & Amanda Instructor Demo at SDFX

Barry Douglas is a renaissance man of dance with 41 years of training and over 30 years of teaching and performing to his credit. His experience spans the funk and rhythm of urban American streets to the finest ballrooms in the US and Europe - 17 countries!! His training background includes ballet, tap, and jazz, Swing, Hustle, adagio, ballroom and choreography, all from some of the best dancers and choreographers in the world. He is a master technician that challenges his students on all levels and transforms their inefficiencies into graceful motion. He lives in Detroit, Michigan, and travels extensively throughout the U.S. and internationally. Barry is certified by 6 different agencies to teach 18 different dance styles, received a Masters in Jazz Choreography from the National Jazz Dance Congress and he is also a certified dance judge. In 1995, Barry won the US Hustle Championship to add to his many state and regional championships. 26 titles in all!!!

Brenda is fulfilling her childhood dream as a professional dancer and instructor. Brenda's early dance training included about 30 dance styles. She has also studied musical history and theory, dance history, dance instruction, several physical health methods, and other related subjects adding to her knowledge of the body, dance, music, and teaching. Brenda continues to study and train with coaches, historians, and practitioners, always striving to increase her understanding and ability.

Brenda has put the majority of her focus over the past many years into the Lindy Hop, Balboa, Blues, West Coast Swing, and Salsa communities. She believes we are all born with dance in our bodies, and that each of us can use this activity as a means for personal expression, connecting with others, and exercise. Brenda loves the image of being able to dance anytime, anywhere, to any music, alone, or with anyone. She spends her time living this dream for herself while assisting her students in accomplishing their personal dance goals.

Solo Blues - Night Train

When Campbell dances with a partner, it is a complete experience: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. She is grounded with a diverse technical background, but her dancing is unpretentious; she follows to make each dance the best it can be for her partner. She is known for melting into her leader's connection and making leaders more aware of their own movement by mirroring even the most subtle detail.

Campbell loves living in Austin, where she teaches social dance courses celebrated as the most popular on the UT campus. Her approach fosters an appreciation for fusion by drawing connections between the varied styles she has studied--some of her favorites being lyrical, waltz, lindy hop, and tap. While her warmth and patience create an inviting atmosphere for all levels of students, she carefully challenges them to realize their full potential.

Chris & Campbell Demo at SDFX

Chris was drawn into Blues by the freedom and expression that sets this dance apart, and he's never looked back. As an addict since 2006, Chris has been slowly developing a style all his own, taking the parts he loves from other dances and molding them into the blues "aesthetic": the footwork and the precision of argentine tango, the energy and exuberence of lindy, the smoothness and sly attitude of west coast swing, the rhythm and motion of latin, and moves and tricks that could only come from the depths of his bizarre mind. Call it... Macro-Blango-Hop.... Yeah.

Through all of this, it's musicality at the core of his dancing. You'll often see Chris on the side of the floor, too tired to stand, but still dancing with his hands and feet (or fingers and toes if it's *really* late). Between this focus on rhythm and a strong sense of partnering, he keeps people on their toes.

Chris & Campbell at BluesSHOUT! 2010

Mike (the Girl) Legett began dancing in 2001 at a ballroom studio in Memphis, TN. She converted to swing a few months later in Knoxville, TN, where she fell in love with Lindy and Blues in the winter of 2002-2003. She flirted with Tango off-and-on before committing in February 2007, and it wasn't long before she left grad school to become a full-time dance junkie, a position she still holds in her current residence, Philadelphia, PA. 

Mike's true loves in life are teaching, dancing, following, and music. There's no order, because for her, these things are intrinsically linked. Mike combines an intuitive understanding of connection with an analytical speaking style to give her students technique, but also strives to challenge and inspire her students to push themselves further into the music. She aims to help leaders create artistic compositions that are clearly led; she wants follows to have the ability to be the completely literal follow, and the inspiration and freedom to be an imaginative and dynamic contributor.

Whether you are a beginner struggling to understand the basics of a dance, an intermediate working on the details of making it feel better, an advanced dancer that needs that next inspiration to jump start his dancing, or a teacher looking for new & fresh ideas... Andrew's classes have provided all of that and much more to thousands of dancers around the world, taking them to their next levels, which is exactly what he will do for you.

Andrew Sutton and Anna Whitmire at HFX

Orville has performed with the Seattle's premier dance fusion troupe the Harlequin Hipsters over the past few years in addition to choreographing and performing with Emerald City Swing for 3 years. He has been a regular performer with the East Side Swing Cats and has taught at Burn Blue, Blues Underground, PLU, and Case Western University in Cleveland Ohio. He has also been studied in Ballroom, African, Modern, Ballet, Contact Improv, Tap, and the Circus Arts. His current passion is in the Partner Acro Modalities.

Through gymnastics, hip-hop, and jazz dance, Kelly has gained an avid awareness of body composition and balance from a young age. During college, she became a modern choreographer, performing with the Repertory Dance Group for four years. She also joined Swing Out and fell in love with lindy hop, taught weekly classes, and eventually became president of the club. In the past two years, Kelly became a member of the Harlequin Hipsters, based in Seattle, and has performed in variety shows and nightclubs doing fusion improv and acrobatics.

Ruby Red discovered social dance in 2000, and by 2001 was swing dancing regularly in San Francisco. By 2005, she was teaching and DJing at the first iterations of San Francisco's Friday Night Blues. Since then she has traveled the US and to the UK to teach, DJ and share her love of Blues and Swing with other dancers. Now based in Chicago, she helps run Bluetopia, Chicago's monthly blues dance and continues to travel to other cities to connect, collaborate and bring inspiration back to her community. Not only a continual student of dance, she's also a certified massage therapist and has studied other movement forms including Kung Fu, T'ai Chi and Iyengar Yoga.

John Joven has been been Swing dancing since 1998 and Blues dancing since 2001. He initially learned all of his first moves on the social floor by watching other great leads. Eventually he joined Chicago's Big City Swing and has been performing and teaching with them since 2004. He and Ruby have been cultivating the Chicago Blues scene together since 2005, with open practice sessions and more recently, a variety of workshops. His dance expertise draws on Blues, Lindy-Hop, East Coast Swing, Charleston, Balboa, & Carolina Shag. One of Chicago's most well traveled dancers, John is the quintessential social dancer - you rarely find him off the dance floor.

Lessa started DJing at house parties way back when, and then was groomed as a "real D.J." at events across the country. She is most at home in the down-tempo and more contemporary music styles, but tries to express her idea of balance between old and new, fast and slow, groovy and just downright kick-your-ass. Her one true goal in D.J.-life is to make it categorically impossible for you to sit still while she is on the boards.

PFX 2009 - Lucky Skillen and Lessa Thieme Demo

PFX 2009 - Ben Long and Lessa Thieme

Chris started swing dancing in 1998, and started teaching Lindy Hop and Blues in 2001; soon after had his national DJ debut at the first "Cheap Thrills" in St. Louis. Since then he has taught at over 30 local, 12 regional, and several national blues workshops including: Blues Rising (San Francisco), Enter the Blues (Atlanta), and Blues Summit (Denver).

Chris truly adores teaching. His teaching style bends the rules and incorporates many genres of dance into his blues. His goal is to create a well rounded dancer out of each student. After establishing a solid foundation of connection, he teaches you how to be creative and expressive through musicality and motion. His classes include: Ballroom style blues, micro blues, traditional blues, tango blues, house blues and much more; pretty much "Blues Fusion."

Chris Ransdell and Dee Kalick Blues Dancing at La Casa

Heriberto "Eddie" Perez is currently a principal instructor at Viva Dance Studio in Cleveland, OH, a studio that specializes in both competitive and social dancing with a focus on lead and follow. He teaches Lindy Hop, Blues, Ballroom (American Rhythm, American Smooth & International Latin), Hustle and West Coast Swing and specializes in Argentine Tango, Blues Fusion, Salsa, Mambo and Body Movement instruction. As a native of Puerto Rico, music and dance have always been a part of Eddie's life, but he truly fell in love with dancing at age 15. Over the years Eddie has added numerous other dance styles to his repertoire, and he excels at blending aspects of different dances to refine his own personal style.

Iconic Movement is a step ensemble that expresses a form of percussive dance in which the entire body is utilized to create aesthetic movements and to produce complex rhythms and sounds through a mixture of footsteps, spoken word, and hand claps. Created in 2009 by a handful of Tufts University alumni, Iconic Movement strives to provide an outlet for steppers from all over to come together and build upon their skills and exchange ideas with other experienced steppers. Members of this group are committed to creating a team that far excels previous teams in technicality, difficulty, entertainment, and professionalism. This group also hopes to introduce step to different audiences and increase the interest of step in the North East, while simultaneously benefiting the community by teaching and performing for community events and shows.

"Alpha"

The BFX Instructor Ensemble Group includes Ivy Grey (Portland, OR), Ruth Hoffman (San Francisco, CA), Justin Riley (Lawrence, KS), Will Shaver (Eugene, OR), Kayce Spear (Portland, OR), and Gideon Syfrett (Portland, OR).

Together, this group of teachers has danced all over the world with many dancers and great varieties of music. The group of ensemble teachers are trained in blues, west coast swing, lindy hop, Argentine tango, ballroom, African dance, hip hop, and many other types of dance. They're sure to teach you to have a great time dancing with any one to any type of music -- regardless of background or experience level!