Portrait of a local tango facilitator

Hi everyone,

Last year we asked local tango teachers and organizers to share a bit about their world: their challenges, motivations, and most helpful resources.

Fielded April-May 2025, the Tango Teaching Facilitator Survey received 45 responses. Although this isn’t enough to make statistically relevant claims, it does allow us to start fleshing out a qualitative portait of local tango facilitators.1

Thank you so much to everyone who completed the survey and shared it.

People building local communities are not “just” teaching tango. Nearly every respondent struggled with attracting beginners, retaining them, and keeping them engaged long enough to integrate them into the social dance community. It is a fragile and leaky student pipeline.

At the same time, they are dealing with interpersonal tensions, frictions and conflict that really impact participation. These can destabilize and fragment small communities, and drive dancers away.

What if’s:

• What if we could create more motivating programs that attract and retain learners, and market them with more skill?

• What if we could become better resourced at proactively defining community values? And containing, engaging, and growing through community friction?

• What if, instead of taking sides, community members would support overburdened tango organizers by refraining from divisive and judgmental communication and sidestepping drama?

Local tango teachers are profoundly motivated to build community.

They have an unreserved devotion to tango as a transformative interpersonal art form.

They just want more tango in their lives, and they will do what it takes to create it.

They are addicted to how rewarding it is to initiate others into the joys of tango.

They feel responsible for tango and fear that if they don’t succeed tango will die.

What if’s:

• Tango is a seductive spirit that can call forth more than we can afford. What would it take to develop the maturity and clear boundaries that are needed to steward tango sustainably and long-term? Let’s be “eyes wide open” about tango martyrdom, and remind ourselves and our organizers that saving tango can’t come at the cost of health and financial wellbeing.

On a personal note: I facilitated a tango community full time for almost ten years and ended up so deeply burned out that it took me almost seven years to recover. The choices we made to support tango were ruinous for my partner’s health and our financial stability. Tango facilitator burnout is real, serious, and not necessary.

Tango teachers showed commitment to ongoing learning. They detailed many kids of investments into deepening their understanding of tango and tango facilitation.

These included: instruction (workshops, trainings, private lessons), cultural immersion (trips to BA and other communities), exploration of complementary somatic and movement disciplines (e.g., pilates, yoga, gyrokinesis).

And, they also said they grew through dialogue and exchange with peers and mentors within and beyond their community, as well as self-directed reflection, study, and experiments.2

What-ifs:

• Learning is never-ending, exciting, and expensive. It might seem like we are never “there” or “good enough” — and this can lead to impostor syndrome for newer community facilitators. What if we could really acknowledge and celebrate what we have accomplished, as well as where we are still growing?

We asked what resources local teachers found most helpful to their efforts of developing their local tango community.

Other than the obvious (digital tools and affordable spaces) the thing that stood out the most was supportive relationships: relationships with engaged students, relationship with other organizers locally and non, relationships with mentors.

These are supported by a culture that fosters kindness, trust, collaboration, cooperation and “co-opetition” between groups.

What-ifs:

• What if there were real, high-integrity, well-supported containers that really facilitate peer-to-peer and mentor-based dialogue between colleagues across communities?

Building a tango community is supremely complex, especially in a world where spaces are expensive, and our culture holds so many myths about tango.

It is exciting to see new projects and experiments germinating to support local community builders. I’d love to hear what you find especially valuable that’s specifically designed for tango community facilitators.

I have been working on the following fronts to address some of the challenges:

• Program design. Program design that attracts and retains is one of the most overlooked aspects of building a tango community. Building on the core learning experience design principles used in the Tango Challenge, we are helping local facilitators do this. One opportunity is at the Awaken Tango Pop-Up in Minneapolis, May 8-10 (More below!)

• Peace between tango humans. The problem of interpersonal drama in tango communities is big and thorny and wicked, and no one person can solve it. We’ve been teaming up to provide content and learning experiences that support reducing division and judgment, like the recent Judgement, Discernments and Praise workshop.

• Supporting dialogue between organizers. We are prototyping a new model of peer learning and mentorship for tango organizers through the tango guild initiative. Our earliest founding cohorts have found so much value in our TheoryU-inspired coaching circles and developmental community. If this interests you please join the wait list. We will be opening up again in a few months!

A lot of content out there on community-building is pretty superficial. It doesn’t come from an embodied place. It feels like the creation of a controlling mind, not a living practitioner. Patricia Mou’s wise and inspired piece, 23 learnings on building community and holding space is different. This post holds so many resonant truths and is deeply applicable to our work facilitating tango. Read, metabolize, and share!

I am excited for this intimate event designed for emerging and established tango facilitators. This is an introduction to one of the most overlooked facets of local community development: program design.

Participants will leave with the tools to create programs that will attract and retain serious tango learners. Fall is an amazing time to launch motivating new programs. Spring is the right time to start developing your strategy, and design a program that is really well suited to your context and values.

The event is just for 20 max and I’m excited about the thoughtful, open-hearted group already gathered. Please join if you feel called, or spread the word to people who can benefit.

Learn more and sign up

Thank you so much. I’m also so thankful to those early supporters who have pledged your support of Awaken Tango’s Substack! Your encouragement means so much.