Tatiana Tarabanova is an experienced dancer and teacher of jazz-modern, hip-hop, afro and contemporary.

She has started her dancing career at the age of 4 at the gymnastics department a Belorussian Olympic sports school. Soon she has quit gymnastics for choreography. In 1997 Tatiana has graduated from the Choreography and Arts college in Minsk as one of the top students in choreography.

In 2002 she has also got a diploma of the Saint Petersburg's Physical Education and Sport Academy of P.F. Lesgraft (Department of gymnastics).

Nowadays Tatiana works as a choreographer of a junior dance group called “Chudesniki” (since 1997). Among her most famous projects are such well known dance performances as the “Arrow”, the “Mechanism”, “Discovering myself”, the “Apple slang”, “Play moments”, “Living there”.

These performances have been awarded at many national and international dance festivals in Ivanovo, Petrozavodsk, Ekaterinburg, Kharkov, Moscow, Riga, Tallin, Turku, Gdansk, Hamburg and other. Also she has an award of the Open Festival, Austria.

She has taken classes from the world's most well known dancers. She has a number of certificates:

• Jazz dance from Phil La Duca (USA) and Edward Truit (USA);
• Jazz modern from Eddie Okampo and Adrien Herd (USA);
• Modern fromBarbara Haley (USA), Ivona Olshovska (Poland), Katrin Bennet (England), Barbara Sarro (France), David Roy (USA) and Asa Astrem (Sweden);
• Funky from Lucien di Camply
• Hip-hop and street dance from Anna Stel (Sweden)
• Afro from Bernar O'deri (Benin) and Nora Shipaumir (Zimbabwe/USA);
• Contact improvisation from Zennon Dance company (USA), Chris Aiken (USA), “Partnering” of Bill Young (USA) and other.

Tatiana has been a part of Kevin Word's DCDC company project (the best afro-american troup of 2002 in USA). About a year and a half she was working as a dancer of the “Dance” troup.

During last seven years she has created about 35 choreography performances for the dance groups of Ekaterinburg, Petrozavodsk, Gdansk (Poland), Minsk (Belorussia), Kharkov (Ukraine) and St.Peterburg.

She now gives regular classes in Ekaterinburg, Kazan, Alushta and Moscow.

Since 2002 Tatiana is a member of jury of the “Roza Vetrov” international festival, held annually in Moscow.

Also in 2002 she has been given a special grant from the Cannon Dance school for her choreography performance named “Living there”, presented at the young choreographers' festival in the modern dance nomination.
During 2004-2006 she has been working as a choreographer for several of drama plays, such as “Vegetables” by Ilya Tilkin (Osobnyak theatre) and “5 evenings” by Irina Zubjitskaya (Molodejniy theatre).

In the beginning of 2007 she was invited by the Lenfilm company as a stage director for the “Sujeniy-Ryajeniy” movie filming. Her soul is to keep moving constantly, as she thinks moving is life.

Afrojazz

The classes aim to combine traditional afro-dance with jazz-modern. Moving is treated as a natural live action, extensional and solid, but at the same time truly based on the basics of afro aesthetics.

These classes are an experiment, an effort to create the new body language that would combine the classic jazz moves of Alvin Aly with plastique and grace of the dancers of Benin, Zimbabwe and Kenia and also with modern jazz dance.
The main goal of these workshops is to create clear and light moves, musicality and expression.

The program includes learning the basics of ethnic afro plastique together with classic jazz dance (A. Aly's technique), studying some synthesized combinations and spatial motion (jumps, crosses, etc.)

In our classes we will use moves and techniques that come from the afro-american dances and also you will learn the ways of reducing the tension of muscles while dancing afro style dances.

Every day we will learn some new basic patterns, which we will turn into a complete routine by the end of the course.
You will be able to see your dancing improve from class to class – the learning material will become more and more complicated as you learn.

The workshops are designed for dance teachers and dancers of intermediate-advanced level. Be ready for quite heavy exercise load.

We may not end up dancing as expressive as African dancers, but the unique opportunity to enrich your body language and to see the art of moving from a different perspective is definitely worth a try!

“Mankind has created borders between races, religions and cultures. If we can see further than that, we will be able to realize that there is something else in this world, something bigger, something that unites us”.

Geraldin Blanden