Jennifer Richard Photography
We are: Joanne Canalli & Rusty Cline
Click here to read what our students and instructors have to say…”
The list of master level tango instructors Rusty and Jo have worked and studied with is literally “The Whose Who of Argentine Tango”. Many of the world renowned dancers that have influenced their dancing have stayed in their home where they had the luxury of exploring tango in very intimate settings. This vast and rich exposure has affected their dance and their teaching styles over the past decade. Jo and Rusty make frequent trips yo Buenos Aires to dance and study. Rusty found tango in 2001 and became a full time tango instructor in 2004. Joanne found Rusty teaching tango in 2004 (he was her first teacher in tango) and began studying with him in 2005. They eventually became partners and she began helping him teach in group classes and private lessons.
Rusty & Joanne have been traveling to study tango together ever since. They have danced and studied tango in every major US city and all over the global map; from New York to San Francisco, London to Mumbai, Buenos Aires to Sydney. As such they have worked with over 100 master level world class instructors and have attended, studied and danced at scores of tango festivals. They have been teaching and organizing tango group classes and workshops in Tucson since 2005. They founded the annual Tucson Tango Festival in 2009 and continued to organize one to two festivals per year.
Teaching since 2004 Rusty has taught over 50 Tango Workshops. More than 1200 dancers. Thousands of classes. Tens of thousands of private lessons. 3 Tours in Australia, Perth, Bunbury, Geraldton, Mandurah and Denham.
Tours in US include California, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Workshop weekends in Portland, Astoria, Eugene, Las Cruces, El Paso, San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, Rockridge, and Burning Tango.
At the 2014 Festival they took their partnership to a new level and were married during the Saturday night milonga. At the conclusion of that festival they handed the reigns over to their student and friend, Jim Baker in order to pursue new adventures in Tango and life. Rusty and Joanne have competed in and repeatedly placed in the top 10 at the only Buenos Aires officially sanctioned Argentine Tango Social Salon US competition in the US held in San Francisco. They have also competed at the Mundial World Championship in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2011.
Jennifer Richard Photography
Rusty and Jo’s passion is to share the remarkable magic that is Argentine Tango with the world. Coming from a normal everyday work life background and walking into a ballroom as a beginner, they understand what it takes to become an accomplished Tango dancer. They believe you can dance, too!
About: Rusty Cline
Rusty Cline has danced, competed and attended more than 60 festivals and 4 trips to Buenos Aires, the vast experience of this master teacher is remarkable and varied. He has worked with more than 120 top level tango masters, 15 of which were world champion dancers. In his own right Rusty is a world class dancer and a consummate teacher that is always growing evolving and expanding his teaching abilities. Rusty has invented a number of teaching tools that expose some of the more evasive components of the tango foundation and form.
Rusty has been a musician and song writer since 1974 year, his tool bag is full of tricks and tools of mastery for any dancer to learn from. He spent his youth as an athlete so his body awareness is sharp and clear. He combines these skills to apply a grounded and balanced approach to the “Walking dance of Tango”. He can help you get inside of your movements so you can develop the form needed for fluid dancing. He will help you discover the elements from the inside out that make a step flow and work with your partner as you build and sharpen your foundation.
Rusty has a concrete and sound approach to his instruction. He is constantly improving his instruction with training with other world class dancer/instructors. Having been certified as an Aerobics and Weight Trainer gives him spot on body mechanics. Rusty’s YouTube Videos have had almost a million plays in total.
“There is a very fundamental foundation that underlies all of the movements in tango and if it is missing, it is readily apparent. Tango isn’t mysterious, you can grasp it. In the end, Tango is all about mind/body information, discipline, training and repetition. The techniques needed to dance Tango well are not at all mysterious, a bit complex perhaps, but totally accessible. With a reasonable amount of effort anyone can learn to become a competent social dancer. My job as an instructor is to teach you to find your own style by providing you the proper tango foundation. Good leading and following in tango gives you room to be yourself. My words can only be a small slice of the alluring scrumptious recipe that makes tango so special and so popular.”
About: Joanne Canalli
Joanne’s passion and love for tango has motivated her to rise above the challenges of learning to dance while battling the stiffness resulting from scoliosis surgery at a young age. She brings the experiences and epiphanies of her personal struggles and breakthroughs to her students enabling them to realize that they too can attain higher levels of tango through awareness of what their body can do.
Joanne started her dance life in 2004 at the Arizona Ballroom Company as a student, falling in love with ballroom during her first introductory lesson. She soon became an avid and intense learner, taking lessons almost every day of the week. ABC very quickly became her home away from home and Joanne realized the next step in her dance journey was to become an instructor so she began with their instructor training courses. It was during this period that Joanne was introduced to Argentine Tango by Rusty Cline and her passion was fully realized.
Argentine Tango instantly became her primary focus. Joanne has invested a great deal of floor time on lessons and practice. It wasn’t long before she and Rusty began attending Tango Festivals around the US. Her first major festival was the Portland TangoFest and it was her first adventure in dancing outside of her own community and the impact of the experience opened her eyes to what Tango is to the world outside of her home community. From Portland, Joanne has since danced in scores of cities around the US and in Australia. Joanne first ventured down to Buenos Aires in 2005 to study and learn from the masters of the dance and has since made several trips to further her knowledge and experience in Argentine Tango. Joanne is passionate about learning and takes every opportunity to develop her skills and techniques from the many experienced and insightful teachers around the globe.
During her dance journey, Joanne struggled with an inherent stiffness generated by a scoliosis surgery rod implant in her spine at a young age. She had always worried that this would be an impediment to her reaching an advanced level of dance. To her surprise she is now doing moves with her body that she thought would never be part of her repertoire. Her strength and flexibility have both improved due to the intense work she has put into learning tango. The lesson Joanne has learned from this personal experience is that dance is a possibility in most anyone’s life, regardless of age or physical abilities.
Joanne would love nothing more then to introduce Argentine Tango into the lives of as many people as possible. Her philosophy towards teaching is that it should be fun and the student should leave at the end of each lesson with a wonderful feeling in their heart, a big smile on their face and the certainty of having learned something new while eagerly looking forward to more.
Jim Baker
You really are on to something Rusty Cline. I can’t imagine where Lorayne and I would be if we had started this way. And you’re right that the main thing is how much simpler your method makes it. Keep up the good work we are sure enjoying the ride.
Thank you! My hour with [my wife] Lorayne Baker Monday night was amazing… she was grinning from ear to ear and we did sacada after sacada and most of it was her idea!! How cool… Thank you!
Lorayne Baker
Rusty thanks for a great tanda last night! Bigger thanks for your patience on my tango journey. Your about to turn me into a dancer. That’s something I truly wasn’t sure I would ever say. Thanks to your lessons I’m not only still dancing after a bit more than a year but I’m enjoying it.
Richard Ganzel
Thanks you for all of your advise and critique. I am paying for critique, not compliments. Having taught university for 40 years, all my best students would concur. Unlike the first year learning steps, we do not get tired in your classes even though I play tennis 8-10 a.m. on Thursdays.
We really appreciate both of your instructional efforts very much. You both are making tango a joy, which will make us return to Buenos Aires to dance instead of being tourists in a lovely city. Thank you. Richard
Andrea Monti
Rusty & Joanne are excellent people. They are very involved in the tango world and culture. They are tireless in their study every time we see them they have dramatically improved their dancing. They are always learning more and more about the dance, the music, the different orchestras and the culture. They have a solid understanding of the tango and its codigos.
These are the things that make them good instructors. Thank you for passing this information along to your students. We look forward to working with them again next year.
– Andrea Monti Founder of the USA Tango Championship in San Francisco
Joanne Canalli – Rusty’s foremost tango student:
“Rusty Cline was my first Tango teacher and to this day is still my primary Tango teacher. Without Rusty’s love and dedication to tango and his knowledge of body awareness I most likely would not have reached the level of dance that I am currently at.
I have taken many lessons with various Master’s of Tango, and what I hear in their lessons is what Rusty has already been passing on to me. His continued awareness of himself as being a lifelong student of tango has enriched my personal learning experience as he is always ready to gain new knowledge and pass that on to his students. He does not cloak himself in mystery or restrict himself to that frequently erroneous belief of “this is tango that is not tango”. His willingness to acknowledge the beauty and intricacy of all styles of tango has lead me down a path of openness and acceptance in my tango lifestyle. This openness enables me to strive towards being a participating and active follower for any leader.
Thank you Rusty Cline for being such a shining catalyst in my life adventure!”