Sydney Tango House

Sydney Tango House is a tango dance and music school run by Refik Unluer & Emily-Rose Sarkova in Sydney, Australia. They have both dedicated their lives to the study, instruction and performance of tango dance and music, and since Refik moved to Australian (from Turkey) in 2015, they have begun to plant the seeds of Sydney Tango House. Ultimately, their goal is to have a dedicated space in the city for tango, as there are no locations 100% dedicated to this incredible artform. In 2016 they began the mammoth task of taking out a commercial lease and curating their own space. 

The vision is a space which is a practice space during the day with tea & coffee available to lure in non-tango dancers and expose them to the awesomness of tango culture, and a full on tango dance studio by night, with special workshops and seminars every weekend on all things tango - dance, music, culture. Plus it will also be host to tango shoes and fashion.

Some of our big missions with this space includes:

• Giving the opportunity to lots of students and young people to take up tango by making it accessible socially and financially.
• Promoting new tango music culture
• Facilitating the mix of ideas between tango professionals throughout Australia and worldwide

After months of paperwork and a huge sum of money, they were finally able to secure the lease and also had their Development Application approved! A big step in a long journey. Now comes another lengthy process of securing a 'Construction Certificate', undertaking renovations and then applying for an 'Occupation Certificate'. You may imagine this to take a fair amount of work, but apart from the many specialists who need to be employed for their services (certifiers, architects, planners, lawyers, acoustic technicians, plummers, builders, electricians etc), Sydney Tango House also needs to fit out the space which includes a custom dance floor, mirrors, sound system, coffee machine and kitchen upgrade to meet food and saftey requirements etc. 

We have designed lots of our rewards to go towards the vision of Sydney Tango House - many also supporting our youth training program and also the tango musicians of Australia so please scroll through an see what awesome packages you can have for supporting this project!

We have a long list of  conditions from council and each specialist requires a fairly hefty fee (between $1000 - $2500 each time)

• Certifier
• Acoustic Engineer
• Architect
• Electrician
• Plumber
• Carpenter
• Disabled access consultant
• Ventilation specialist
• Fire service consultant and fire safety engineer
• Food Safety Superviser course (1 day course we both need to complete which is required for health and food safety)

Fit out:

• Harlequin sprung dance floor (One of the best quality dance floors around. Beautifully spung and made of high quality long lasting materials - this makes up most of our fitout costs).
• Kitchen fitout to meet health and safety standards for our café component 
• Air conditioning (every dancer knows this is super important!)
• Coffee machine (to keep the buzz going!)
• Paint
• Mirrors
• Shoe display cabinets 
• Sound system with sound monitor (the sound monitoring device is again a requirment from council).

Where to start! We have had numerous challenges already and still face them. Of course our largest challange is finacial backing for all the many expenses we encounter. From our experience with preparing the Development Application documents, we now are expecting every certificate or document we need to prepare cost us another neat sum - at first it all came as a huge shock, but now we understand why small business struggles so much in Sydney.

This crowd funding campaign is hoping to achieve some aleviation from the financial pressures whilst also giving the opportunity to our supporters to experience a piece of Sydey Tango House once we open our doors! Apart from the crowd funding we have also taken on lots of extra work in our various other areas of expertise (music and photography) and are pouring all our funds into the project.

A huge challenge is always coming up against difference of ideas between partners. It is wonderful but also difficult to work with your life partner and we often have different methods for approaching a task. To help overcome these challanges we do two things: practice being very patient! and also outsource to our friends and to experts for opinions. Seeing a situation with fresh eyes is an important way to keep us energised and positive towards the project and one another - plus we love to get our friends (lots of tango dancers!) involved in the project :)

** We want to credit the great music we used in our video:

La cara de la luna: Francisco Canaro

Los Vino: Otros Aires

La Colegiala: Enrique Rodriguez

Chapado a la Antigua: Pablo Estigarribia y su Orquesta