Our Resident Instructors

Carina Moeller (Founder and Artistic Director)

Carina Moeller is an accomplished dancer with professional training in modern dance, ballet, tap and jazz.  She performed across Europe and the United States in theater and dance until finally settling into New York and founding Triangulo.  She continues to be regarded as one of the foremost instructors in the city and is known for the supportive and  friendly environment she creates for her students.  She has taught across the US and Europe and performed with Pablo Veron, Julio Bassan, Murat Erdemsel, Eduardo Goytia, Steve Cook among others. Among the hundreds of students she taught were Willam Dafoe and Matt Lauer. She and her students have appeared on The Today Show, and The  Economist voted her “The best in Town”.  For more detailed information click here or check out some of her performances with Eduardo Goytia at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center: traditional tango, milonga, alternative tango.

Dante Polichetti

Dante Polichetti discovered the Argentine tango in 2002 and instantly fell in love with its beauty, movement and sensibility.  After some years of study and student performances, Dante joined the New Generation Dance Co. and appeared alongside such esteemed artists as Carlos Copello, Guillermina Quiroga, Natalia Hills and Gabriel Misse in “El Rey del Tango,” and “Volver al Sur.”  Teaching in NYC since 2007, Dante is more than pleased to join Triangulo’s staff and share in the unique and vibrant community that the studio offers.  Forever a student of this magnificent artform, Dante is honored to share what he has learned and synthesized from many wonderful teachers over the years.  He looks forward to continuing the exploration, the conversation, that is tango. Abrazo, caminar, bailar.

Our Visiting Intructors

Steve Cook

Steven Cook has performed and/or taught with Carina Moeller, Monica Paz, Brigitta Winkler and Sabina Wolfson. He has taught for Triangulo, Tango Cafe, and Ukraine in New York City. He is resident instructor for Asada Milonga and has taught for Pocono Tango, Firehouse Tango, and at festivals such as Tango Extravaganza, Slovenia Tango Camp as well as in Berlin and Portugal. Steven began his career as a dancer with Chicago Ballet. He later danced with the Houston Ballet and on Broadway in the musical “Doonesbury”. Steven has been teaching movement to actors at the Stella Adler Studio since 1995 where he has directed over 30 plays. He has been a guest teacher/director for National Shakespeare Conservatory, National Theater of the Deaf, and Cirque de Soliel.  For a video, click here.

Carolina Jaurena

Influenced by her parents, a Bandoneon Master and her mother a Tango singer from Venezuela, from an early age Carolina pursued a desire to perform. Her training includes ballet, salsa, and flamenco to where she now specializes in Argentine Tango. She has worked with some of the most recognized names in the tango world, Jorge Torres, Fabian Peralta, Cesar Coelho and Hugo Patyn. Having been fortunate enough to work with some of the best, it comes as no surprise that Carolina’s career is filled with a long list of dance credits that includes, Tango & Tango at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Tango Fantastico at the Bellearyre Music Festival, on Broadway at Town Hall in the show “Tangos for la Milonga” with Romulo Larrea and in 2005 she traveled to Europe to perform with the Sudwestfalen Philarmonic at the Symphonic Tango night in Hilchenbach-Lutzel, Germany. She performs regularly with Teatro Si in New Jersey and in New York with Leonardo Suarez Paz’s“Cuartetango” and Thalia Spanish Theatre in Queens.

Carlos Paredes

CARLOS ALBERTO PAREDES ANGEL was born in Cali, Colombia. He began to study Break dance and Salsa when he was 6 years of age, and years later he began to dance Argentine tango. He studied at the Piazzola academy with Professor Marta Mejía and at the Deka academy with Ancizar Velazques, in addition to taking classes with great masters in the city of Buenos Aires, such as Miguel Angel Zotto and Aurora Lúbiz, Luís Grondona and Mirta Sol, Fernando Galera and Vilma Vega, Claudio González and Melina Brufman, and Martin Ojeda and Johanna Copesto to name a few. Carlos Paredes is known in Colombia for dancing a style called “Canyengue”, a style that goes back to the very roots of tango. It is considered very particular and enjoyable. In August of 2006 he participated in the Tango World Championship in Buenos Aires, obtaining first place in the Stage Category. During the same year Angelino Garzón, who is currently the vice-president of Colombia of the Valle del Cauca awarded him with the Vallecaucano Merit Medal in the square of the governance.

Richard Ariza

As host of the Saturday Chelsea Market Milonga, Richard began teaching the introductory classes in 2006. From assisting his teacher Carina Moeller, Richard went on to teach introductory and beginner classes at Triangulo. Richard’s milonguero style is the product of the influence of the many teachers with whom he has studied including Carlos Copello, Mario Bournissen, and Willie Feuer. Richard has taught at Milonga Del Encanto as well as University High School in Newark. For the past three years he and his partner Maura Hays have been teaching the Absolute Beginner class that immediately follows The Afternoon Milonga on the last Friday of each month.

E. Maura Hays

E. Maura Hays’s Argentine Tango journey commenced formally in January 2004 via her studies through Triangulo: The Studio for Argentine Tango with the incomparable Ms. Carina Moeller. Since 2004-2005, Maura Has embraced and studied the milonguero style of the Argentine tango both privately and through group structure with instructors such as Maria Jose Sosa, Ivan and Sara Terrazas’s FeralTango Lab, Mariela Franganillo, and Rebecca Shulman, to name a few. Maura commenced milonga organizing, hosting, and Introductory and Beginner Tango Instruction with Mr. Richard Ariza in 2005 through Triangulo’s Chelsea Market Milonga and its Introductory Workshop. In June 2007, Maura and Richard collaboratively developed and launched Triangulo’s joy-inspiring Friday Afternoon Milonga. In 2008, Maura initiated Triangulo’s Saturday Afternoon Milonga.

Laure Lion

Laure Lion is French and grew up in Paris. She was first introduced to tango by her maternal grandmother who danced it in her youth. Laure studied acting in Paris throughout her childhood, and in her early twenties she moved to New York to continue her creative journey. She resumed tango a few years later, extensively studying with tango masters in Argentina and New York. Her understanding of tango and its technique has been re-enforced by her on-going training in Gyrotonic & Gyrokenisis. She is thrilled to be part of Triangulo.

Jay Derrah

Jay Derrah caught the tango bug in 1999. His early teachers included Ernesto Balmaceda, Julio Balmaceda and Corina de La Rosa, Nestor Ray, and Danal and Maria Bastone, the pioneering couple who helped create the New York tango scene. In these formative classes, the instructors were inspirational at teaching the musical, rhythmic and, especially, the joyful elements of the dance. Jay started teaching for Triangulo in 2004. In his classes, he hopes to continue in the tradition of his instructors, emphasizing all three of those elements, with a continuing highlight on the joy.

Ana Padron

Award-winning Argentine Tango dancer Ana Padron is one of the top performing dancers in the world today. Her style is energetic, sensual, rhythmical, and innovative, and through her fluid moves, she fuses Nuevo tango with the close embrace look of traditional tango. She has studied a wide range of dance disciplines, including classical ballet, jazz, African dance, Jose Limon, and Martha Graham techniques, and she continues to draw inspiration from these in her tango, which she discovered while at the New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida. In May 2008 Ana toured though Asia as lead performer in The Four Seasons tango show, directed by Fernanda Ghi and Guillermo Merlo. Her flourishing career continues; Ana co-created her very first (now annual) production in 2010: The Tango Zone show. For her full biography, see Tango for All.