Sabrina Veliz, 42, from Buenos Aires
Ruben Veliz, 45, from Buenos Aires
On Astana
It’s the first time we’re here, we’ve heard of it not much. We visited Moscow festivals for many times and met there Kazakhstanis. We know almost nothing about the city, as we’ve just come here. As for people, they’re very warm and friendly.
We’re from Buenos-Aires. It’s different from Astana, not so windy.
We’re interested in opening new places, possibilities to share our art with other people. It’s important to come to new places. We didn’t try your food as we eat the food similar to ours while travelling not to get sick.
We’re leaving next morning, as we have concerts in other cities. We’re going to Portugal for the festival of tango in Porto. We hope next time we’ll have an opportunity to see Astana. The only thing we saw here is the airport.
We were in Almaty for 2 days. We gave a concert and conducted some lessons, it was very nice.
On tango
We’ve been dancing tango together for 20 years. We started to learn in Buenos-Aires, before that we were professional folk dancers at a company, then we left it to practice tango together, to work at shows, foreign companies. We’ve travelled to many countries, festivals, we teach. We have the possibility to travel around the world.
We started being a couple after some time we started dancing together. We always travel with our daughter, but before we had a son with us, now he’s 20 and studies in Buenos Aires. It’s hard to travel without her.
Some years we travel for 6 months, and 6 months we’re in Buenos Aires. Each tour lasts for 2 months, then we have rest at home for 2-3 months and then we go to the tour again. It depends, some years are very busy, some are quite.
We’ve visited many countries; we don’t even know a certain number. We’ve visited some events like festivals in Switzerland for many times. The next year there will be 12 years of our work there. I think Italy and some Russian cities, Istanbul, Germany are popular with tango.
Yesterday we had a concert and visited the theater only. We want to support organizers and the community in Kazakhstan. We know some people engaged in tango, we regularly meet them in different countries, for example Alicia, and others. We don’t know when we’re to visit Kazakhstan next time. It depends on the schedule and organizers, if they want to invite us.
Last night there were about 800 visitors at our concert in Astana. As for Almaty, there were about 300 people, yet the theater was full too. The public was very warm, we felt the energy. Everybody stood up. The concert was for 1.5 hours. There were 8 people engaged in the concert: 4 musicians playing the piano, violin, contrabass and the bandoneon and 2 couples.
We’ve been making choreography of our repertoire for long as it takes much time to create movements, find music, make choreography. Then you need to learn how to maintain the connection between the couple, how to feel the music, how to make the movements well, how to put it on the stage.
We don’t know how much time we’re gonna dance, as tango style and movements can be adapted depending on your age. If you want, you can dance till you’re very old. We will see.
