Layered teaching
Level is not a label attached to a class. Vocabulary, technique, styling and difficulty are adapted to the person actually present.
The new season · Tuesday 1 September 2026
1 September.
Tango returns to Lausanne.
Four small-group classes, two connected evenings and teaching adapted from a dancer’s first step to the finest questions of an experienced dancer. The 1–2 September opening is the month’s only opportunity to participate without a partner.
Shawn Koppenhoefer
Teaching since 1991 — still researching.
Over the years, Shawn has worked with beginners, advanced dancers, teachers and professional artists. Today’s classes remain open to that breadth: come to begin, renew your own dancing or return—even after years away—to find ideas worth passing on.
Meet Shawn
What makes this work different
Not merely learning steps.
Learning to see, hear and choose.
Shawn’s teaching connects 35 years of work with beginners, advanced dancers, teachers and professional artists to an unusually broad way of understanding tango.
More than “musicality”
Dynamics, listening, silence, density, breath and structure. Shawn’s past years as a first violinist left a lasting imprint on how he hears and teaches.
More precise than “lead and follow”
Communication, connection, roles, autonomy and perception make a dialogue between two people rather than a mechanical transmission of instructions.
People learn in different ways
An idea can become clear through movement, sensation, an image, a few words, a drawing on the floor or sometimes dance notation. Shawn’s personal study of Rudolf Laban’s movement theory helps him prepare and deepen this work.
- Since 1991
- teaching tango in Lausanne
- Several ways in
- body · sensation · image · words
- AMBCTA · 2010
- invited, evaluated and recognised in Buenos Aires
- SwissDance · 2011
- specialist Argentine tango examiner
Tango as a living art
Vocabulary is only the beginning.
Each class connects what the body does, what the couple communicates, what the music makes possible and what the shared space demands.
Trust, choice, generations
A room where learning never costs you your choice.
A safe space cannot be proven by a photograph. It is built through clear practices — and an atmosphere where serious work still leaves room for laughter.
Your partnerPartner rotation is never imposed.
Your roleLeading, following or exploring both is not determined by gender.
Your privacyWatching is welcome; photos and filming are reserved for participating students, among themselves and with everyone’s agreement.
These archives also show school-age students and larger workshops. Today’s weekly classes are small groups: that makes the work more personal, not less ambitious.
To make an idea visible, Shawn may dance for a few moments with someone who is there — whatever their age or level, whether they lead or follow. This common practice when a teacher works without a fixed teaching partner turns the demonstration into a real exchange: the explanation adapts to the person instead of reproducing a rehearsed teacher duet. The class remains his; the movement is discovered by two people.
See · trace · understand
Sometimes the floor becomes a blackboard.Shawn regularly uses chalk to make an idea visible: a direction, a spiral, an axis, a relationship of distance or the path of a movement. Not everything passes through words. A mark on the floor can let the body understand differently.
Artwork created by Shawn for an earlier campaign — it evokes a real practice in his teaching.The physical nature of movement
Weight. Wind. Water.
For Shawn, dynamics is not simply about “dancing musically”. It concerns how force begins, travels, meets resistance, changes direction, becomes suspended and then dissipates through two bodies.
The images exaggerate like metaphors. The class brings those forces back to the floor, the partner and choices that can genuinely be felt.
Tuesday19:00
Registration open
60 minBasics
Ideal for beginners and meaningful at every level. The depth of the basics is adapted to each dancer.
Choose this classTuesday20:00
Registration open
60 minnon-Basics
Normal Argentine tango material beyond basic vocabulary for intermediate and advanced dancers. Curious teachers are equally welcome.
Choose this classWednesday19:15
Registration open
60 minIntermediates
Classical non-basic themes, often revisiting Tuesday material at a higher level of difficulty.
Choose this classWednesday20:15
Registration open
60 minAdvanced & Intermediates
An exploratory class using less familiar ways to examine rhythm, roles, perception and movement.
Choose this classChoose your opening-week class.
Register for 1–2 September