Teaching since 1991 has not meant repeating one lesson for 35 years. It has meant enough time to challenge how movement, music and communication are seen and taught.
An unusual path
Movement, music, models — always serving the person.
Born in English-speaking Canada and based in Lausanne since 1991, Shawn teaches in English and French and also works in Spanish. Many extended stays in Buenos Aires shaped his tango.
Because everyone learns differently, he varies how an idea becomes clear: movement, sensation, images, words, floor drawings and sometimes movement or dance notation. Students do not have to learn a notation system.
The violin belongs to his history; his listening still carries its memory. A first violin and assistant concertmaster in Canadian youth orchestras, Shawn also had violin-making in his family landscape: his stepfather was a luthier. That formation still sharpens an ear well beyond counting beats.
His EPFL doctorate in computer science and abstract mathematics encourages a fondness for useful models. His personal study of Rudolf Laban’s movement theory helps structure his questions and explore tango. These tools inform his preparation; they do not replace dancing.
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.
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.
Workshop archiveHumour, attention and the pleasure of exploring together.Tango in schoolsMovement speaks to younger generations too.Class archiveExperience ranging from large groups to highly personal attention.
Today · an inquiry for twoA shared question opens the next movement.
Here, Shawn and this dancer make an idea tangible by dancing it. Their grounding answers, attention keeps the proposal alive, and each choice leaves room for the next. Form does not precede their dialogue: it is born between them now and remains open to what they will discover next.
Historical archives · three landmarks to open
These dates belong to history—and each leaves a trace.
1991 —96
Lausanne · 1991–1996
Teaching, connecting, then returning to Buenos Aires.
After settling in Lausanne in 1991, Shawn developed his teaching there. That same year he was already travelling alone to Buenos Aires—the first landmark in more than 35 visits to the city. From 1993 until January 1996, he created and maintained the EPFL Tango Server, one of the world’s earliest online tango communities. In 1996 his path returned him to Buenos Aires, where his work included coaching dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet.
The invitations to dance at Sunderland Club came later. The photographs and period announcement let visitors see that chapter instead of merely being told about it.
The card bears Shawn’s name, membership number 194 and the seal of the Asociación de Maestros, Bailarines y Coreógrafos de Tango Argentino. It gives tangible evidence to the 2010 invitation and evaluation described in his history.
In 2002—in an earlier chapter of Shawn’s path—Shawn and Cathy, then teaching partners, gave five Argentine tango modules at the SWIDAKO congress in Brunnen: roles, musicality, adornments, creativity, Piazzolla—and even a choreography for two dancers and a chair. That collaboration belongs to the historical record. In 2011 Shawn went on, in his own name, to serve SwissDance as an external expert and specialist Argentine tango examiner.
This Venn diagram refuses overly tidy boundaries: the same movement can be vocabulary, technique, style and connection at once. All eight dimensions overlap, challenge and transform one another.
Choose a dimension — its boundaries remain porous.
01
Vocabulary
Vocabulary is what the body can say, not what it can recite. A walk, pivot, ocho or pause only acquires meaning inside the conversation that receives it. In tango, a figure is never merely a figure: intention can also make it technique, musicality, space or relationship. A larger vocabulary offers more shades with which to answer the present moment.
Shawn today
A living inquiry, danced in the present.
These two images belong to this dance in the present and to what it can still open—a precise, sensitive inquiry particular to this exchange.
The images and names below document earlier chapters in Shawn’s path. They describe neither his classes nor his collaborations today.
Archives · learning from his teachers
The years pass. The questions keep dancing.
Shawn’s tango grew through work with many teachers—and still draws on the questions they opened. Many of the connections formed then continue today with former teachers, students and teaching colleagues. The history is not kept under glass: it continues to influence how he observes, dances and teaches.
Shawn working with Maestro Pablo Ojeda — early 1990s, in the Netherlands.Shawn with Maestro Pablo Verón — personal archive.Shawn with Maestro Eduardo Flores — personal archive.Shawn with Maestro Fabián Salas — personal archive.
Production archive · Holiday on Ice · 1998–1999
Tango meets a surface that slips.
A surviving newspaper clipping announces Xotika in Nice from 18 to 27 September, with 60 skaters, 400 costumes and staging by Kevin J. Cottam. It documents the scale and language of the production, but does not name Shawn. His own record places his work here as tango specialist, trainer and consultant, undertaken with Isabelle Gilliéron, then his dance partner. That distinction matters: the clipping establishes the world of the show; the personal archive still carries the precise role that must be verified.
Surviving newspaper clipping · Nice · publication title and date unidentified.
Class archive · 2007
A question becomes clearer through dancing.
In this 2007 sequence, Shawn works directly on a movement with one dancer, then amplifies the response before the group. Three frames from the same inquiry: the question becomes clearer in action, with these students and their different points of view.
KODAK 2007 · 17A18 · 19 · 20
Shawn teaching dance notation at MuSaCa in Geneva.
Undated archive · MuSaCa · Geneva
When notation leaves the page.
Invited to teach dance notation at a MuSaCa event in Geneva, Shawn works here directly on the floor among the dancers. This language quietly informs how he makes paths, supports and relationships visible; students in his present classes do not have to learn a notation system.
Shawn presenting his tango photographs to visitors at the exhibition in Décines.Shawn behind one of the exhibited photographs.
Archive · photography exhibition · Décines · April 2010
Tango, from the other side of the lens.
These archive images show Shawn presenting his own tango photography. A surviving public programme places the “¡ Tango !” event at the Toboggan media library in Décines in April 2010. That practice of looking belongs to his history: searching an image for the moment, line and space continues to inform how he observes movement and teaches today.
These close crops retain the movement and the singularity of each dance while leaving the women in these archives in discretion. They belong to different earlier periods in Shawn’s tango; they describe no current collaboration.
Dance archive · date unconfirmedArchive · Zürich Tango Marathon · photograph by Daniel KäsmayrDance archive · date unconfirmedDance archive · date unconfirmed
Archive · Buenos Aires · Sunderland Club
Invited — then invited again.
Twice, in what is now a historical chapter of his path, Shawn was invited to dance at Buenos Aires’ Sunderland Club, before regulars and elders of the tango community. He performed with Catherine “Cathy” de Mandrot, then his dance and teaching partner.
The DJ was Félix Picherna. Their hosts thanked them with Swiss Swatch watches and a bottle of wine — an affectionate wink to their visitors from Lausanne.
This milestone belongs to their former period of collaboration; the current chapter is Shawn teaching in his own name today.
Period document: the reproduced announcement spells the venue “Sunderlan Club”.
Historical document — the printed times, levels and addresses are no longer current.
Teaching archive · former collaboration
The themes evolved. The inquiry never stopped.
This earlier brochure shows that balance, posture, walking, expressiveness, musical interpretation, communication, creativity and curves of energy were already part of Shawn’s work. At that time, an important part of the inquiry developed with Catherine de Mandrot. That collaboration belongs to the historical record; today Shawn continues teaching in his own name.
