Who We Are
Our directors are:
Garth Bawden — Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, New Mexico
Leslie Jones — Corrales, New Mexico
Karen Reck — Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, New Mexico
History
In November 2009, Linda Garwood hosted North America’s first Encuentro Milonguero in San Diego, California. It was an invitational mini-festival for experienced dancers of the Milonguero Style of Argentine Tango. Susana Miller taught small, personalized master classes in the afternoons. In the evenings, participants attended milongas that were open to the entire community.
During that encuentro, Susana Miller, Linda Garwood, and two dancers from Albuquerque, New Mexico, discussed organizing encuentros across the US, and creating an organization to help promote those encuentros. Those two dancers brought the idea back to like-minded local dancers, teachers and organizers in New Mexico. Discussions began on both organizing an encuentro in Albuquerque, and creating an organization to promote encuentros in the US.
On May 31st 2010, a group of devoted milonguero-style tango organizers and instructors from across the US and Canada met at the 10th Denver Memorial Day Tango Festival. They discussed organizing encuentros in North America, and creating a central web site and mailing list to promote them. A week later, the encuentromilonguero.org web site was launched for the purpose of promoting all encuentros in North America. The group’s organizers shared the mailing list’s sign-up page with experienced milonguero-style dancers to begin building the list.
In November of 2010, the group changed the name to “Siempre Milonguero” and the contents of encuentromilonguero.org were transferred to siempremilonguero.org.
Siempre Milonguero’s original board members held their first encuentro in Albuquerque, New Mexico in March 2011. The organizers then created a separate organization called “Encuentro Milonguero Abq” to separate the functions of organizing encuentros in Albuquerque from Siempre Milonguero’s larger mission of promoting all encuentros in North America.