NYU Steinhardt is excited to announce that Leonardo and Olga Suarez Paz will serve as Dean’s Scholars-in-Residence for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Their multidisciplinary performing arts project, Leonardo Suarez Paz’s PIAZZOLLA 100, aims to elevate and further Nuevo Tango as a contemporary art form across all disciplines and to demonstrate its inherent capacity to connect and unite across cultures, genres, and generations.
Just as NYU Steinhardt strives to advance knowledge, creativity, and innovation at the crossroads of culture, education, and human development, Leonardo and Olga will collaborate with the Dance Education Program in the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions (MPAP) to elevate and illustrate the power of the art of Tango through performances, workshops, and more.
An artist since the age of six, Leonardo comes from a long line of musicians and artists, beginning with the Afro-Argentine poet Gabino Ezeiza, violinist Fernando Suarez Paz, and Astor Piazzolla, the Argentine-born, New-York-raised composer who revolutionized 21st-century music. An accomplished singer, Tango dancer, violinist, and choreographer, Leonardo’s appearances and productions have included the Orquesta Estable del Teatro Colón, Broadway shows Forever Tango and Tango Argentino, Julio Bocca’s Ballet Argentino, the New York City Opera, and many more.
In 2009, Leonardo partnered with dancer and choreographer Olga Suarez Paz. She currently directs Nuevo Tango Ballet, a group that aims to expand the boundaries and the perception of Tango as an artistic language. Nuevo Tango Ballet does so by contemporizing the traditional form with elements of modern dance, classical ballet, and dance theater, and by creating new narratives around gender roles and themes of liberty, inspiration and love. Olga has been featured in performances by the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra and the Knickerbocker Orchestra of New York.
Together, Leonardo and Olga’s productions have been featured at the Teatro Colón Opera House, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at the Latin GRAMMY Awards Live Show, following a double Latin GRAMMY Award nomination in 2012.
During their residency, Leonardo and Olga will work closely with MPAP, and in particular the Dance Education program, to bring their unique interpretation and performance of Tango to the Steinhardt community. This close collaboration is a highlight of the NYU Steinhardt Dean’s Scholars-in-Residence program, which launched in 2018 with the goal of welcoming distinguished academics, artists, advocates, and other thought leaders to the NYU Steinhardt community.
“We want to share our expertise, our passion and our knowledge, our belief that generosity and solidarity make us richer and that the most exciting, innovative, and forward-thinking ideas are propelled by freedom and born at the crossroads of cultures and in between definitions,” Leonardo and Olga said.
On September 29th, Leonardo and Olga will perform a ten-minute repertoire at a Scholars-in-Residence welcome event. In addition to this event, they will also perform at Dance Education's 90th anniversary Distinguished Faculty Concert in November, and host a Tango music and dance workshop for students and faculty in the Spring.