Our DJs

Derek Tang - Los Angeles, CA

Derek is one of the most requested DJs in Los Angeles and has played at festivals and milongas throughout the country. He is a teacher, organizer, and has competed in several Tango competitions throughout the years; winning the SoCal Tango Championship in 2016 and placing first in the Vals and Milonga categories at ATUSA. Derek is known for his tremendous energy as a DJ and dancer.

"The music is an essential ingredient to creating a magical evening. My responsibility as a DJ is to create the energy that will allow every dancer to express themselves to their fullest abilities."

Jens-Ingo Brodesser - Brussels, Belgium

Jens-Ingo (Zingo) is a Greek-German dancer, muzicalizador and leading expert and lecturer in the field of Golden Age Rioplatense tango living in Brussels, Belgium. His journey in tango started some 25 years ago and tango became a part of his life.

With the musicalization at over 700 individual events on his counter, he is among current day's most experienced tango DJs and had the opportunity during his travels to collaborate with many prominent artistic personalities and dancers. Well-known from some of the premier and legendary high level tango marathons in Europe, Americas and Asia, he also is very reputed and appreciated from djing at festivals, encuentros and regular milongas.

He also connects in friendship to some of the old Argentine milongueros and followed at the same time the evolution of contemporary tango both in Europe and South-America. During the last quarter of the century, he has seen many changes in taste and "codigos." As an organizer, he successfully runs several tango events in Belgium and Germany, among which is La Cita de los Amigos, one of the best high-level dancing events in Europe attracting top tangueras and tangueros from all over the world.

He is also the co-founder and collaborator of Tango Time Travel. TTT is a tango music project providing high-quality digital transfers from original shellac and early vinyl records. The foundation of this project is an extensive and unique record collection covering repertoire of sound documents from the whole history of tango. In this framework he conducts research together with his team into the history of tango music.

He presented tango music workshops for both music lovers and dancers as well as tango DJs at major festivals and milongas, like i.e. recently, in the last 24 months, in Hong Kong at Tango Challenge Festivalito, at Frostbite Tango Festival in Finland (in English language); Tango Young, Milonga Crema Essen and Tangoloft Berlin in Germany (in German language) and several lectures in France and Belgium (in French language). His blog has some freely available in-depth articles.

Lampis Zalavras - Los Angeles, CA

Lampis has been fascinated by tango for two decades and continuously tries to expand his understanding of this complex art form. Playing the right tanda at the right time is critical for an emotionally fulfilling evening of dancing and he aims to achieve exactly that with his music selections. Lampis focuses on traditional music that keeps the dancers on the floor until the very end of the milonga. He is based in Los Angeles and has been regularly DJing in multiple events all over the world.

Rebecca Rorick Smith - Portland, OR

Rebecca's tango journey began in 1999 while pursuing her BFA at the University of Oregon. 26 years later and her feet have never stopped dancing!! From 2000 Rebecca has lived and taught within numerous communities in the USA, and around the world. Now, after 5 years teaching in Berlin, she is settled back in Portland, OR. As a teacher Rebecca has always believed in the transformative process of learning tango and is fueled by the metamorphosis of a student. As a traditional tango DJ she strives to bring a warm atmosphere to any Milonga and maybe pull a heart-string now and again. Her focus is on continuity within and between tandas with a wide-ranging appreciation of old and new.

Robin Thomas - New York, NY

When Robin came back from his first trip to Buenos Aires 22 years ago, he realized that if he wanted to continue to dance tango every night, he would have to find a way to attend milongas for free. At the time, the concept of a tango DJ barely existed. Organizer’s would put on a CD, and often it would repeat to span the length of the milonga. Robin wanted to play music as he had heard it in Buenos Aires: in tandas of tango, vals, and milonga with cortinas in between. He began to DJ doing exactly that, despite being told not to play cortinas as people would dance to them. Initially some people did dance to the cortinas, but Robin persisted until this format became the standard. Over the next 10 years, he was invited to DJ in D.C., L.A., Denver, Portland, Miami, and some of the biggest festivals in North America, as well as, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Berlin, Seoul, Shanghai, and Buenos Aires. Currently Robin co-organizes Gallo Ciego and a Tuesday practica in NYC.

Tommy Smith - Boise, ID

Tommy has a passion for traditional tango music and DJing, and he believes understanding the mind of the social dancer is the key to great DJing. To educate and motivate beginning DJs, progressing DJs, and those interested in tango music, he offers semi-regular DJ workshops. Festivals he has DJ'd at include Montana's Tango Uprising, Salt Lake City Tango Festival, Mountain Milonga, CONNECT, Tango on the Rocks, and Washington DC’s Tango Holiday.

Yulia Kriskovets - Washington, DC

Yulia has been a tango DJ for over 15 years, both locally in Washington D.C. and in various tango events in the U.S. She loves to contrast the music texture and emotional charge in a way that drives the crowd to dance a lot. She aims to get to the trance-like state where dancers feel safe and inspired. Most recently, Yulia is inspired by the idea of the wave from the 5 Rhythms dance practice and incorporates it in her tango DJ'ing.