Oxygen Tango

I was introduced to this place while looking through Groupon.
The instructors here are very friendly and everyone here is like a big family. They are currently going through some changes to make this place more community-​based and welcoming people to pay what they can for membership fees. I strongly recommend signing up for classes here and hope you can join our new tango community!

I first heard about Oxygen through the KCRW Fringe Benefits catalog. I’d always wanted to learn tango as my grandfather was Argentinian and I found it to be a compelling dance. A few months later, I was thrilled to see a Groupon for Oxygen. At $ 39 for 10 classes, I bought it immediately. In September of 2013, I finally started attending classes. Mitra, one of the teachers and a founder of Oxygen, suggested that we wear Converse or Toms for the first class. Since I am a vegan for health and ethical reasons, I didn’t feel right about buying leather dance shoes so I bought a pair of Converse. On a side note, there is a company in El Monte that makes non-​leather dance shoes. It takes 8 weeks and costs about $ 120. The first time I entered the studio, I was greeted and made to feel welcome. The classes are set up so that Mon-​Thurs 7:30−9 are beginner classes and practice. There is a different class each day of the week and those run for four weeks. Due to my schedule, I ended up not being free every Monday, for example, for four weeks in a row so I had to mix and match. Although they say one can join up until the 3^rd week/​3^rd meeting) of a particular class I felt a bit lost if I missed the first meeting of a particular class. Several of the other beginners were in the Tango Challenge so they were getting tango practice 5 – 6 days a week. Since I was going at most twice, I did feel like I wasn’t progressing as quickly as they were. If you have the $ 700 or so and the time for the Challenge, it sounds like a great way to learn and progress quickly. Even a monthly membership is probably a good idea. Since I only had the 10 classes, I didn’t want to use them all at once and ended up spreading them out over 5 months, which was probably too long. The teachers, especially, Mitra and Stefan, are very accessible, friendly, and enthusiastic. Their love for tango is evident from the first moment one meets them. I’ve found the students to be quite warm and encouraging, too. I have only attended the regular classes during the week, so can’t speak about the prácticas, milongas, or boot camps. While I am not sure when/​if I will be able to take more classes at Oxygen, I do hope to return soon. I recommend this school to others who are curious about learning tango.

More than five stars! Oxygen Tango is a wonderful, loving, warm & encouraging place. I was so lucky to have stumbled across this tango studio while looking for a place to learn how to dance tango. I’m part of the 12^th Tango Challenge (a program I highly recommend). Through this program I have met some really supportive & loving people, including my wonderful cohorts. We are all so excited to be embarking on this journey, one that started, for the most part, with Oxygen Tango. The teachers, the program director, the staff members manning the reception area, everyone is wonderful, including the students. It seems everybody is on a first-​name basis, and there are genuine hugs all around. If you are new, you should be quickly made to feel welcome. There are classes Monday through Thursday, and 3 weekly practica sessions (Tue, Thu, and Sun), and a monthly milonga and bootcamp. Sign up for the membership and take advantange of all of these! I can’t say enough of this studio!

I am part of the current Oxygen Tango Challenge group (check the site for Oxygen Tango Challenge info) and it has been great. Its the perfect place for an absolute beginner to learn tango. All of the instructors are great and its a very friendly community. From day one I was encouraged and helped by the more advanced dancers. If you are looking for studio to learn tango I would highly recommend that you try Oxygen. It is a real Tango Community.

It’s the friendliest tango school in just about anywhere I’ve ever been. Helpful teachers and friendly community vibe, the perfect place for beginners to learn the sensual tango dance!
Lessons Monday — Friday. They also have beginner friendly practice sessions on Thursdays and Sundays. Very low key, and great for even DAY ONE beginners. Give it a try!

I finally started a month ago after over 20 years of Salsa dancing. I was happy that my husband followed a week later and we are now going Mon-​Thurs and Sundays for classes and practice.
Mitra and Stefan make it so much fun to learn tango in a very relaxed and friendly environment with an eclectic group of tango dancers. I love that they offer a lot of different classes/​packages like the Tango Boot Camp for those looking to jump start their tango experience and the intensive called the Tango Challenge for all those who want to learn it faster with more intense/​personal attention and small group setting.
Social Dance like Tango is great way to take a break from our hectic life and all the electronic gadgets we turn to way too much these days. Learning a new style of dance and connecting with oneself and others in a relaxed social setting is a wonderful way of exploring the unknown and having fun.
For me dance is/​was always very important, curative ;-) and like meditation in motion where one has to be centered, connected to the partner & present all while having fun and doing something good for the body/​brain as well.
I highly recommend Oxygen Tango for anyone interested in learning tango and for all who prefer an amazing nearly daily class schedule offered to beginners and intermediates plus all the workshops/​bootcamps on weekends!
Parking is easy in front or adjacent parking lot of tire store/​after hours
Teachers: Mitra and Stefan are amazing people/​teachers/​dancers!

I’m writing this review as a visitor from out of town. I live in Boston and dance tango there, but I was visiting LA for the holidays and decided to drop by Oxygen Tango.
I showed up unannounced to a Thursday practica, and was immediately welcomed warmly by both Mitra and Stefan. I was then warmly welcomed by everyone else I met and danced with. The space was beautiful, the people were friendly, and the tango was great. Overall, I highly recommend checking this place out if you are looking for a good place to dance and meet fellow tango addicts in the Los Angeles area.

Oxygen Tango is the ideal place for learning Tango. The environment is welcoming and encouraging. You will learn the essential fundamentals for becoming an adept Tango social dancer.
The classes are fun and full of energy. Mitra and Stefan continue to devise creative methods to excite and challenge Tango students of all levels. After taking one class, you will understand and appreciate that Tango is a FEELING and not a dance. That FEELING will fill you up and have you coming back thirsting for more.
I can proudly say that I am a Tango addict and it is all thanks to the supportive community at Oxygen. They helped me discover my passion and continue to help me excel not only as a Tango dancer but as a Tango dj as well.
Go visit Oxygen Tango, you will definitely not regret it.

I’m a beginner, and for me Tango is very hard to start with. The structure of the classes make it perfect for me to progress. For the beginners, we don’t feel overwhelmed with an enormous amount of tricks, but focus on the feelings and the technique that creates them.
Perfect place to go if you are serious about learning Tango!

I had the pleasure of taking a Beginner and Advanced Beginner series with Mitra at Caltech in lat 2010-​early 2011. I have taken classes from 5+ other instructors over the past 5 years or so, more off than on, and Mitra is by far the best. A warm and wonderful human being, who is also a creative and encouraging teacher. (Not a diva, like some others.) Something CLICKED with Mitra’s teaching, and all of the sudden I could dance tango and felt good about it. I’m still learning, but I credit Mitra with helping the dance come alive and for bringing the joy back into it. Thanks, Mitra, you are the best!

This is a warm and welcoming place to be a beginning tango student. Mitra and Stephan go to unusual lengths to make everyone feel at home, like part of a community. They really love what they do, and convey that passion in every class. The beginner classes are accessible, but still challenging. It’s more of a meditation than a dance class actually, learning to move with and read your partner. You switch off roles, so you learn both parts, and women dance together, as do guys. If you show up with someone, you’ll end up sharing them with the room, but it really makes you a better dancer. I really love this place.

A quick update because this school is growing and developing and thus my review deserves a revisit.
This continues to be one of the most fun, creative and yet focused tango schools in Los Angeles. In addition to their usual wide range of fundamental tango classes, Mitra and Stefan continue to expand their vision and have brought in some other great teachers from LA to offer classes on special topics.
For instance, over the past two months there were weekly classes specifically on the different tango orchestras and how to dance to the different feelings they create. These classes were taught by Kyla Mares. I’ve been studying tango basics for two years and it was thrilling to move on and for first time feel I was in a class with a true choreographer trying to help us capture and express the music using the tango vocabulary we already have. I’m not a good enough dancer to do even 30% of what she was asking, but that was part of what made it so inspiring!
I see now that Mitra and Stefan are starting to offer intriguing special topics like a class just on unique walking steps and another on improving the embrace.
What you’ve got developing here, based on the ambitious vision of the founders, is a little Tango University — RAND meets Julliard meets Tango, with a little bit of Burning Man thrown in when they have monthly tango parties ’til 5 am with themes like Earth Day with cave decorations and videos of lava flowing. I hate this dumb cliché, but this is surely not your great-grandmother’s tango, unless she happened to be the mother of Astor Piazzolla.
I’d bet money in 5 years or less this place could be one of the important dance institutions in Los Angeles. In a way it already is – it’s just that recognition might take a while. And after that, the sky’s the limit. If you want to get in on the ground floor of something truly visionary, here’s your chance. Like anything visionary, occasionally it has its rough edges, but that’s part of the fun of it. Ever seen Frank Gehry’s early work? Rough, rough, rough… But look what came of it. Tango is taking off in LA. A number of great dancers and teachers have moved here from around the country in just the past few months. Now’s the time.
And of course, if you just want to learn a little tango and get some exercise and meet some new people, you can do that here too. You’ll definitely be doing it in an inspiring atmosphere.
10 stars for these folks.
P. S. One minor point so I don’t appear to be a total suck-​up: Yes, they need to improve the sound system for the monthly tango parties (milongas, in the parlance). They have a one speaker P.A. system and it would be so much better to have a higher-​quality sound system. It really is much more pleasurable to dance when the sound quality is good.
July 2010 Update — The stereo issue was fixed a few months ago.
This place is perfect. The monthly milongas are amazing; beautiful, ethereal evenings you won’t find in any other activity in LA… Don’t miss Oxygen if you have any tango tendencies at all…

Oxygen Tango is an incredible tango school. The school offers the most diverse and structured dance curriculum in Los Angeles. Inspired by the teaching styles of such great tango schools as Dance Manhattan in NY, OxygenTango emphasizes nailing down the basics first before moving on to the more complex things. The school pays special attention to teaching students the fundamentals of connection and technique.
The founders and principal instructors of OxygenTango, Mitra and Stefan, are exceptionally friendly and make everyone feel immediately welcome. I highly recommend them! Should you consider taking tango classes anywhere in LA, do give them a try!

After having been introduced to Argentine tango during our honeymoon in Buenos Aires, we decided to try and learn more about it here in LA. Consequently, my wife and I signed up for four beginners classes through
and we were very pleased with the experience.
A little background on us: My wife is a fantastic dancer. Throughout the years, she’s practiced booiaka, reaggaeton and hula dancing (the authentic shit, not the corny coconut bra, grass skirt nonsense). She also fleshes out her dance activities with yoga and pilates 3 – 4 times a week. Needless to say, she’s got a pretty good feel for her body.
Conversely, your humble author is a mediocre dancer at best. So it was with great relief that I saw Mitra and Stefan actively help all of their students through the steps and made sure that we were learning and having fun.
Their prices are also very reasonable and the class times are flexible and pair well with most people’s work schedules. The group that we started with was also very diverse and it was fun to switch partners as well as for men/​women to take both the lead/​follower parts.
To no one’s surprise, my wife seemed to take to the dance immediately, but I feel like I got the right amount of attention from my early frustrating attempts and ended the lesson very satisfied. This is a great experience and something different to do with your partner… or as a guy you can always go to troll for single women as the ratio of was 2:1.

Stefan and Mitra are two great teachers full of passion. In case you are not a great dancer and would like to learn, I am sure they will inspire and motivate you to learn.
Highly recommended to go dancing at Oxygen Tango in Los Angeles!

Mitra and Stefan were my first teachers, and I’m really happy that they were. (I’m eternally grateful you posted that flyer at my yoga studio which got me hooked Stefan!) For starters, they’re wonderfully warm people, eager to help anyone who’s interested in learning, in most any way they can. They’re also refreshingly creative and organic! From their fashion sense, to the communal events they coordinate to promote tango and a sense of family, to the very way they explain new moves, it’s pleasant and inviting to learn from them.
For the juicy stuff, they’re both wonderfully experienced and talented dancers. From extensive training in other dance forms that enhance their tango, to living in Buenos Aires, they’ve got quite a gamut of abilities and specificities covered. And they’re also great at communicating it! I, for one, can be a bit of a pain with question-​asking and details, and they *always* have a good answer. They are also really great at establishing fundamental concepts, which truly extend throughout the progression of movements. Their lessons are nicely structured, such that the difficulty of material is scaffolded, and they build sequentially. (They also have drop-​in classes for those who don’t prefer a structured sequence.) Also, they’ve got the Tango 41 on most everything! They know of, know personally, and are good friends with very many other tango dancers across the country. And they’re quite generous with this knowledge :) This is also evident in the really great crowds that come to their milongas and even prácticas. Lastly, they’re constantly self-​improving and earnestly open to suggestions.
I highly recommend checking them out :)

Oxygen Tango has been the most influential community/​organization in my life here in LA. Mitra and Stefan are the most wonderful people I know — more than teachers, they are friends to every one of their students, from day one.
Their program is engaging, challenging, accelerated and irresistible. Mitra and Stefan’s approach to teaching is deft and personal. They teach a uniquely rounded approach to the dance that moves through the fundamentals of both leading and following the dance. The material is fluid enough that you can explore it at your own pace, while your instructors guide you to make sure you feel you’re «getting it.»
Beyond their classes for new students, Oxygen Tango offers a variety of more focused classes for students who have already explored the fundamentals of Tango. And for established practitioners, their weekly Practica provides a open and collaborative venue to work on new material or refine skills; it is unique in that the real focus is on work and exploration.
Proving they are a truly well-​rounded studio, Oxygen Tango’s monthly Oxygen Milonga is the best Tango event of the month. Each Milonga is individually crafted, with a unique personality each time. The guests they bring in – whether celebrity tango DJ’s or renowned teachers — bolster the quality and ensure a memorable experience.
I can’t recommend the organization enough. The world of Tango is seductive and invigorating, You will find no stronger gateway (into what is sure to become an obsession) than through Oxygen Tango.

Nicest teaches, ever.