La Academia del Tango of Agustin Garcia offers well organised, regular tango classes, practicas, milongas and, whenever possible, hosts professional dancers and instructors from Buenos Aires who are visiting for performing and teaching. There are several other smaller organizations that hold regylat milongas.
The Milonguita is organized by Emma Barreras with the support of the embassy of the Republic of Argentina in Cuba. It holds a milonga on the first and third Friday of each month in the Jerusalem Room of the La Union Arabe on the Paseo del Prado in Old Havana, near the Hotel Sevilla. There is an hour of free class, before the milonga.. During the evening, it is customary to take a pause and enjoy a guest singer or a tango performance.
Milonga La Annunciata, organized by Saul Seijo and Olivia San Roman. With the support of the Jesuit Fathers, it is held on the first Saturday of each month at the Pedro Arrupe Theater of the parish of the Corazon de Jesus y San Ignacio de Loyola. The Theater is located at the bottom of the La Inglesia de Reina, with an entrance on La Annuncita.
Milonga La Racha is organized by Leo D’ Lazaro, an important plastic artist in Cuba. The milonga takes place once a month, the fourth Saturday, in El Ojo de Ciclon, his own gallery-studio located in Old Havana
It is the only milonga that can be extended until the very early morning hours but the space is small. El Ojo de Ciclon is very most important. It is the glue that holds tango in Havana because it is always at the disposal of the milongueros. Tango classes are taught here three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
When speaking about tango in Havana, there is worth mentioning La Compagnia Neotango, a professional group organized in February 2007. It is composed of eight dancers and one singer and claims to be the oldest tango group in the city. The company is under the general direction of professor Rosa Elena Alvarez Fernandez, the artistic direction of her daughter Carolina Balmaseda and theatrical advice of her husband, the renowned actor Mario Balmaseda. It is mainly a group formed by well-trained young Cuban dancers and teachers. They are mostly performers but they could provide private, tailor-made t Plaza de Armas utoring.
While they maintain the tango tradition and defend gaucho dance presence in Cuba, they also try to modernize it through merger with various other types of dance, such as: habanera, son, bolero, popular Cuban rhythms, jazz, flamenco, classical ballet, contemporary dance as well as theatre, with tango rhythm as predominant in song and dance. In 2014 they staged their more recent presentation at the Mella Theatre.
In December 2008, La Compagnia Neotango was invited to participate in the Cambalache Festival, one of the most important in Buenos Aires, where they presented the performance Life is a Dream. The following year they produced their Barrio Tango Show, the first of its kind in the Cuban theatre. Since then, there have been others like Tanguendo, Miradas, Todo Tango that have followed in their path. Their milongas are held in the Paseo del Prado every Sunday. They meet in the park to dance tango, and local people and, foreign visitors often go by and start dancing!
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