Murat Elmadağlı & Vera Gogoleva

Murat Elmadağlı (Turkey) & Vera Gogoleva (Russia)

This radiant pair charms by its invigorating energy, musicality and ludic. Two spectacular dancers, brought together by their common passion for tango which transcended cultures to form a dynamical dancing and teaching couple. Murat believes that there is no such thing as one truth in tango dancing, and so as teachers, together with Vera, they seek to find and bring to light each dancer's own truth.

Murat Elmadağlı graduated from Boğaziçi University, Civil Engineering Faculty, one of the best universities in Turkey. He started tango with his first teacher Çetin Cengiz and then went on to be his assistant for one year. He worked both with Turkish and Argentinean maestros, such as Gustavo Naveira, Fabian Salas, Chicho Mariano Frumboli, Sebastian Arce, Julio Balmeceda, Javier Rodriguez, Esteban Moreno, Ezequiel Farfaro, Roberto Herera, Damian Rosenthal, Selim Yuna, Evren Sayın to improve his creativeness, technique, artistic skill and teaching ability. Following a long trip to Buenos Aires and a thorough examination of the tango schools there, together with his colleagues he founded “istanbulTANGO”. He believes that there is no such thing as one truth in Tango dancing, and as a teacher he tries to find each person's own truth. He is frequently invited to perform and give classes as a guest teacher at international workshops and festivals in Europe, and still manages to successfully run his Tango school from Istanbul.

Vera Gogoleva has been dancing almost all her life. She has spent about 20 years dancing ballroom dances. She became a dance teacher when she was 16 years old. In 2007 tango appeared in her life. This dance changed her and her life a lot. She is now travelling around the world, visiting numerous tango festivals. Every year she goes to Buenos Aires to take classes with best teachers, in an effort to perfect herself both as a dancer and as a teacher. She also constantly performs within a lot of milongas and festivals worldwide.