Things to Do in South Pasadena

Yoga Madre is a yoga studio, boutique, and wellness center offering classes for thirsty fitness-seekers and perpetually pretzel-posed veterans alike. A wide range of yoga skills is taught, ranging from gentle stretching exercises and breath work to Vinyasa flow and meditation techniques. All Madre teachers are deeply educated in various styles of yoga. Each brings his or her own style to the mat work of downward-facing dobsons and sideways-sauntering salamanders, each with equal competence and grace. Consult the schedule to find the class times and levels that suit you. Both new and returning clients can use this Groupon.

Loose-hipped leads Francisco and Stacey Martinez have 30 years of dancing instruction experience between them and 14 years of success with The Dance Family Studio. Alongside their years of experience, the couple released their own beginner's guide to salsa dancing video series and starred in just about every commercial that required comely individuals to swirl about the screen. They and their skilled staff will impart the fundamentals of the groove of your choice, helping to banish insecurity from flowing feet.

What was once the personal collection of Pasadena residents Bob and Arlene Oltman is now a three-story institution with more than 10,000 square feet of gallery space. The Pasadena Museum of California Art features art, architecture, and design from all over the state and aims to explore cultural issues that are unique to California.

As a child in Buenos Aires, Angel Echeverria would sit on the porch of his family home and watch his aunt and uncle dance the tango. Music often spilled into the streets of his neighborhood, where many tango musicians lived. By the time he was a teenager in the early 1960s, Angel began studying the tango himself, and nearly 50 years later he founded The Tango Room Dance Center with Julie Friedgen. Like Angel, Julie grew up watching her parents’ Argentine friends dance tango at parties, and eventually became a ballet and flamenco dancer. Though she didn’t begin learning the tango until 13 years ago, once she started she immediately knew it was the dance to which she would devote the rest of her life.

Not surprisingly, The Tango Room is dedicated to the Argentine style of dance; many of the instructors hail from Argentina and lead classes in traditional, contemporary, waltz, and milonga variations. On Saturday nights the school transforms into El Encuentro—which translates to “the encounter”—a fast-paced dance party modeled after the tango clubs of Buenos Aires. Beyond tango, the school also hosts classes in salsa, belly dance, and R & B line dancing as well as Zumba and bujinkan, a Japanese martial art.

Since its inception in 1979, The Museum of Contemporary Art has devoted itself to post-1940 artwork, a focus that sets it apart from all other Los Angeles museums. Its permanent collection harbors more than 5,000 art objects, encompassing media from video installations and documentary photography to pop art. Works from renowned artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Diane Arbus share gallery space with pieces from up-and-coming artists across the museum’s three facilities.

To complement its permanent collection, the museum hosts rotating temporary exhibits, such as the current Amanda Ross-Ho exhibit, Teeny Tiny Woman, which incorporates architectural elements and large-scale paintings. The museum staff also augments these displays with events, such as their summer concert series in Geffen Plaza, which explores the intersection of music and art like a guitar decoupaged with pages from DaVinci’s journal.