Tymoteusz Ley
Former martial arts adept. Amateur of early-modern music and Renaissance lute. Book-binder and filmmaker. A visionary who implements his projects uncompromisingly. A son of tango dancers.
Tymoteusz Ley is a Polish dancer of Argentine tango, born in 1984. He has collaborated e.g. with Katarzyna Czech, Sabrina Concari, Mila Vigdorova, and Majo Martirena. Since 2015, he has performed and taught with Agnieszka Stach, with whom he runs their own tango school in Cracow.
A few words about his life before tango engrossed him and the activities that shaped Tymoteusz's current artistic profile:
MOVEMENT
Tymoteusz trained from an early age. In the beginning, it was taekwondo and horse riding. As a teenager, he began to study and practice historical fencing, which he continued with great success until his studies. He founded the Brotherhood of Wendish Knights, with which he participated in tournaments and shows throughout Poland.
At the end of secondary school, he started taking his first tango lessons. These were workshops with Argentine masters organized by his parents in Koszalin. After a few years of break, he returned to tango lessons in Cracow, where he was quickly promoted to a teacher at Tango House. From 2009, together with Katarzyna Czech, he ran courses under his own brand, at the Argentine Tango School tangonuevo.pl.
STAGE
He became acquainted with the stage in his early childhood, learning recitation and playing the saxophone. In the years spent in the knightly brotherhood, he also prepared special fencing shows.
As a dancer, he began to perform early on, both at local milongas and major festivals. He has appeared many times before a large audience, including a tour with New Tango Bridge, a dance role in the performance of the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre, participation in the Malicki Show in the Congress Hall in Warsaw, as well as stage shows with Otros Aires and Tanghetto. He has performed in Buenos Aires, New York, Dubai, Barcelona, Cambridge, Rome, Kyiv, and Crimea.
PLASTIC ARTS
He has a diploma of a Master of Bookbinding. His bindings and book designs can be found at the Kurtiak and Ley Artistic Publishing House. As the first course of study, he chose interior design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.
He also pursued various crafts as a hobby. Among other things, he built his own Renaissance lute from scratch. In his teenage years, he was also interested in blacksmithery and created armour and weapons for fencing in his own forge.
He currently uses his artistic talents in film making, both as a cinematographer and an editor. He studied film directing at the AMA Film Academy in Cracow.
CREATION OF IDEAS
Tymoteusz is a visionary, social activist, and an initiator of new solutions. As a teenager, he founded the Brotherhood of Wendish Knights, a structured organization that dealt with training and performative-artistic activity.
In Cracow, he quickly began to initiate his own milongas, including the still existing El Infierno in Cracow, as well as large all-Polish events. For the first few years of his tango activity, he regularly played as a DJ on Cracow milongas . He was the initiator and co-organizer of such events as Tango Porteño, Krakus Aires Project, and Odlot Tangowy (Tangle Frenzy). Currently, he is the co-organizer of the Krakus Aires Tango Festival. In connection with his cultural activity, he brought to Europe and promoted many Argentine musicians and dancers.
Since 2009, he has been running a school with a unique structure, where he employs his own teaching method and educates new teachers. The school has a developed curriculum that is consistent for all the instructors. It is known for training intensity and the exceptionally low average age of its students.
In 2014, Tymoteusz initiated a social campaign called Dance Is a Manly Thing, which promotes dance as an activity dedicated to real men.