Christy Cote - TCF 2004-2019

Founding Member, Choreographer, Dancer

Christy Coté has been teaching, performing and choreographing Argentine Tango since 1996. Her early ballet, tap and jazz and later disco dancing lead her to ballroom dance which she taught for many years. After seeing the stage show Forever Tango in 1995 she discovered her passion for Argentine Tango and has followed that passion ever since. Her mentor, the late Carlos Gavito of Forever Tango fame, continues to influence her work every day.

What I love about Tango Con*Fusión:

"The enjoyment of exchanging lead/follow roles in Argentine Tango is something very special and dancing with the amazing women of Tango Con*Fusión made it possible to explore this at it’s highest level of skill and creativity."

More About Christy

Christy's Favorite Performances with Tango Con*Fusión

La La Puñalada at the San Francisco Queer Tango Festival with Trio Garufa 2009

The “dandy” characters in "La Puñalada” were originally created for the piece called "El Chamuyo” which was one of the most popular pieces in the TCF repertoire. Debbie and I choreographed it one afternoon as the movements just flowed out of us! Over our first 20 years it was probably the choreography that took the least amount of time to create but got the most positive audience response. Our “dandy” characters came to life again in La Puñalada” and it was another crowd pleaser as seen here at the San Francisco Queer Tango Festival performed the music of Trio Garufa live.

"Embrace" 2010

"This particular video of "Embrace" was performed at CITA in 2010 but the performance I write about was one or two years earlier at Confiteria Idea in Buenos Aires at the 2nd Annual Queer Tango Festival of Buenos Aires.

The performance was very avant garde at the time for many reasons…it was in the traditional Milonga Confeteria Ideal, it was part of the Queer Tango Festival (just the idea of having any Queer Tango event was unthinkable a couple of years earlier) and it was a performance to the music of Astor Piazzolla (in complete contrast to the usual tradition music heard in this place). A friend was sitting in the audience who spoke english and spanish and later recounted over hearing two milongueros sitting beside her who said “let’s go have a cigarette” when they heard a group of women were going to perform. They came back a few minutes later but the Piazzolla piece was so long that much to their surprise, we were still dancing. One said to the other as they observed the tail end of our performance “hey, not bad!” And so it goes that Tango Con*Fusion got a vote of approval from this unlikely duo!"

"Un Baile a Beneficio" with Otros Aires in San Francisco 2017

"I was so excited that we had been invited to perform with the very popular Otros Aires band from Buenos Aires. I enthusiastically choreographed a Milonga to

"Un Baile a Beneficio" and we danced to Otros Aires live at the Great American Music Hall. A unique venue in SF where I don’t believe there had ever been Tango before nor after. The really amazing thing is that 2 of our dancers, Rose Vierling and Mila Salazar, were VERY pregnant at the time but kept up with the fast past Milonga non-the-less!"

"El Sol Sueño" at Gricel in BsAs during Johana Copes' Lady's Tango Festival 2017

"This was an exciting venue to perform at as it was always a popular Buenos Aires milonga and that night it was a packed house. The best part of that night was that the world famous, Chicho Frumboli said “nice job” as he passed some of us standing in the hallway after our performance. We were pleasantly surprised! "

Derecho Viejo performed at the Berlin Queer Tango Festival 2018

This was the first time we performed Derecho Viejo with 8 dancers and it was super fun to do it for our first appearance at the Berlin Queer Tango Festival! Rose Vierling and I first choreograph the piece for the International Arts Festival in San Francisco in 2017 and I was very proud of the piece as I felt it allowed me to use my early stage Tango training inspired by the show Forever Tango and my partner, Pampa Cortes, who trained me to dance that style early in my career.