As some of you already know, I was teaching in Las Cruces / El Paso on November 20 – 23, 2009.
I flew into El Paso and had a delightful lunch with Joanie (dancer, owner of El Paso Ballroom Dance Academy) and John (lovely student). Joanie had a great day planned for me: privates and a little performance with Tommy at the milonga that evening.
On Saturday and Sunday in Las Cruces, we worked our buns off in 3 hour sessions. Even though both session were very mixed levels I continued to encourage all levels to work with their partners and to execute what they did know effortlessly. As I always have stated you start with what you do know, or that which makes sense and you build from there: adding on 1 piece at a time, always making sure that you and your partner are still on the same page, or on the desired foot, might be the better analogy! This is always a challenge, I suspect for most teachers, trying to keep "everyone" entertained and challenged. But I also know that it is up to the student to keep challenging themselves as well.
Everyone was incredibly nice, open, generous of spirit. I am so grateful to everyone who worked very hard to make my trip possible. I think I even have to go so far as to thank Will S. since he’s the first one from Las Cruces who drove to take a lesson from me, first contacting me in November 2008. So thank you Will for helping to introduce me to your now former community! Jack and Karen and Cris and Nicky came soon after and how wonderful to watch them grow as dancers and to have them as friends too!
It was great to share dances with Tommy, who has a nice sense of the music and was totally fun even if his ribs were hurting him. I hope he is feeling much better. 
Joanie really knows her students (I think this is a sign of a good teacher) and was very kind to set up privates and bring some of her students to Las Cruces for the weekend. It was so nice to "talk shop" with her.
I have received some of the feedback that Nicky has gathered and forwarded to me and it sounds like most everyone had as wonderful a weekend as I did. I will go back and look forward to it enthusiastically.
Thank you LAS CUCES and EL PASO!!!!
Daniela did a wonderful job connecting with the attendees. She was very
positive and extremely talented. The way she explained moves was exceptional. I truly think I now have enough confidence to tackle the dance that I once disliked very much.
Daniela has wonderful energy, an engaging teaching style and did a great job of addressing skills for all levels. I’m happy that so many of our Las Cruces dancers attended and feel that our community will be strengthened due to the experience.
I was quite pleased with the workshop with Daniela. I thought it was a great success. We had all levels of Tango background and knowledge. It was interesting to see how everyone worked together to learn and improve on this most wonderful dance.
I really enjoyed the weekend workshops and feel like it was time and money well spent. I found Daniela to be a delightful person to be around and appreciate the way she presents the dance, making it not only a good learning and practicing experience but a fun time as well.
I think that it was refreshing, educational, and good for our developing community to have a playful voice like this here— one, who, at the same time, comes with recent experience of how the thing is being danced in Buenos Aires.
