Marisa Van Andel & Oliver Koch

Marisa & Oliver Website

During his career as contemporary dancer with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s company Rosas, Oliver Koch started to dance tango in 1993. Marisa discovered the tango in 1994 and they are a couple in dance and life since 1996. They have been teaching and performing all over Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as in Italy, France, Germany, the UK, Austria, Switzerland, the USA and Buenos Aires.

They collaborated with several dance and theatre companies (Larbi Cherkaoui, Ensemble Leporello, Tiempo Bruto) and teach tango in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s dance school PARTS and in Brussels’ circus school ESAC. They were the choreographers and teachers of the TV Show ‘Let’s Dance’ on Belgian TV. Since 2000 they have been invited to several international tango festivals: Bologna, Firenze, Roma, Brussels, Maastricht, Eindhoven, Les Milonguettes du Tarn…. They have choreographed, created and danced throughout Europe the show ‘Ensueños de tango’ with Quinteto Zárate and were the lead dancers in the Dutch musical ‘Orpheus’.

Over the past 10 years Marisa and Oliver have developed a very personal dancing and teaching style, combining the intimacy and the close embrace of the tango de salón with the creativity and playfulness of the tango fantasía.

Marisa & Oliver’s teaching aims at developing the freedom of improvisation. In their pedagogic approach they analize the basic structures of the tango and the rich creativity of tango. They focus on the techniques and details of leading and following, the active role of the lady, the constant maintaining of the individual and shared axis and on the rythmic and melodic interpretation of the music.