This event was designed and organized by Fuad Elhage, semi-professional Tango and Salsa Dancer, and Lecturer of Spanish and French Languages in Romance Languages and Stephanie Lynn, Community Leader, Former Athens Technology Business Leader, and IT Senior Manager for UGA.
The story of how Stephanie and Fuad met and collaborated to create this event is thanks to Joan Prittie and her well known annual Athens fundraising event, Dancing with the Athens Stars. Stephanie was in the audience with Fuad Elhage and Susanna Drennan performed the first Tango dance in Athens at the 2016 event. After this event, she was so entranced by the dance, she reached out to Fuad to learn how to Tango. And after dancing together for almost 3 years, Milonga Tropical was born.
Milonga is a musical genre that originated in Argentina but the word milonga is also used to denote a dance event or venue where Argentine Tango is danced. A true milonga is very regimented and structured, and there are many rules for the encounters between dance partners. Because the structure of a true milonga can be intimidating to new comers, we created our own hybrid of Tango and other Latin dances, and named it Milonga Tropical. It is an exciting event where guests get to see Tango and Latin Dance and workshops are offered to teach basics of Tango, Salsa, Bachata and Merengue. Later in the evening, guests are able to mingle and dance with the performers. It is a true combination of artistic performance and audience engagement.