Tango teacher who found her feet

New neighbours: Monina Paz from Argentina

Monina Paz is 33 and is a professional tango dancer. She teaches and dances in Dublin and across Europe.

I never really know where I am going to be from month to month because I've been travelling the world doing tango since I was 22. My life as a tango dancer - that's what is down under occupation on my visa - takes me all over Europe and beyond but for the past two and a half years I have made my base in Ireland.

I am from Buenos Aires which is where I started dancing and I first came to Ireland four years ago for one week when I was invited here for a tango event. In a short time I made many friends and when I returned again for a month my friends tried to persuade me to move here for a time. I suppose it made sense to me. In Argentina my friends were always all over the place, travelling or just moving around. In Ireland I found this great group of people - Irish, Spanish, Italian, British and French - and I connected easily with them.

As a dancer I have had the opportunity to live in a few different places, including New York, where I did not feel a connection. I like the way Irish people seem more in the moment and culture is important to them. So I decided to give living here a try.

One of the first things I really got to like was the fact that the city is so small you can walk everywhere. My home city is so big you just accept that it will take you an hour or two to get to work and another couple of hours to get back.

I think if I didn't have so many friends here before I came it would have been harder. As it was I was set up with a place to live and I had people who could explain things that I found strange, such as why everyone felt the need to order seven pints at 11.30pm.

When I'd been here a few months my dancing partner Julián in Argentina asked me to tell him how it was in Ireland because he was thinking of coming to join me. I told him the girls are all blond and it rains all the time. He was cross. He said: "So this is how you seduce me to go there?" But he came anyway and for the past few years we have been teaching and dancing together.

Things I miss about Argentina would be Mate, the Argentinian tea. And of course I miss my friends and family. In my tango classes it's been funny seeing my students begin to adopt Argentinian ways such as kissing on both cheeks, which both men and women do in my country. What I have discovered from teaching the Irish to tango is that there is this great intelligence in them, they think a lot, and there is great passion but it is often buried inside. It's like there is this wall around them making sure the passion doesn't spill out. People like Italians and Spanish just let the passion spill out but in the beginning Irish people can be more embarrassed about this.

It doesn't mean they are not good tango dancers, though, quite the opposite. The thing I have found is once they see that the passion can be given just to their partner, that it doesn't have to be on show for all to see, they relax more and really give themselves to the dance with a combination of intelligence and passion. I have in my class men in their 50s dancing with women in their 20s and for the three-minute dance they are both sharing something powerful and when it's over it's like, "thank you for the nice dance". That's tango. One big love affair that lasts for three minutes and ends just like that. www.tangoireland.com