11/09/2016
Dear participants of the Denver Memorial Day Tango Festival,
We (Alla Lakov and Peter Simoneau) were excited and happy to take over the festival from long time organizers and friends Tom and Amy last year. We are proud to have brought the festival back to the hotel and filling up all available rooms with out of town guest dancers. We are thankful for the participation of so many in the Denver tango community and sincerely appreciate the help provided by each and every one of our volunteers. We could not have done it without you!
We learned a lot from last year, and had envisioned doing the festival again in 2017 with changes we thought would make the event better for local and out of town dancers. In organizing tango events for the last several years we have endeavored to bring dancers together to share experiences they might not otherwise. Our goal is friendship, not fighting, and to build up our tango communities.
A group of people have chosen to to have another festival run at the same time as the Denver Memorial Day Tango Festival. It is not clear to us the identities of everyone associated with this group but the name of this festival is called the Colorado Tango Memorial Day Festival.
The last thing we want to do is split the Denver tango community by having two simultaneous tango festivals. We find this situation disrespectful to the dancers and will step away from organizing through this chaos. We hope it is clear we are doing this because we feel it is in the best interest of the people in Denver that want to enjoy tango as a social activty.
Thank you,
Alla and Peter
