Tango responding to COVID: An opportunity to reconnect

During the tango renaissance, the tango community unthinkingly inherited and perpetuated a model of teaching, learning, and community that is ill-suited to the unique qualities of this dance. Although COVID is a catastrophe on so many levels, it also gives us an incredible opportunity to correct this.

Here are what I believe COVID gives us an opportunity to do:

• Identify the minimal requirements for meaningful tango learning and socializing and focus on providing resources to support these

• Discover all the ways that great tango learning can happen outside of the group class format (which, as I’ve said on many occasions, has many problems)

• Find ways to collaborate across communities in order to develop new business models, access funding, improve marketing, and tackle thorny, complex problems each organizer has struggled with individually until now

• Develop systems to help our communities become safer; develop educational resources to help prevent incidents between community members, and proactively design restorative processes for when problems do occur

• Invest in communication skills so that the tango community raises the bar on compassionate communication between learners, between partners/teachers, between organizers, between community members

• Develop all kinds of new learning materials and aids that can be used all over the world

• Carry out research to understand what’s been missing in our marketing communications, and find ways to articulate the benefits of tango to new communities

I am excited to see how the tango community rises to the occasion to engage with all the possibility. I see this generation of practitioners as incredibly creative, brilliant, and resourceful. Today we have a chance to reflect on what we don’t need anymore — and tune into who we really are and what we really want to bring into being. We have an urgent incentive to create the new, because we can’t do the old any more. And we have the time to do it.

Let’s seize the moment! And let’s think really deeply, and collaboratively, and not be satisfied for the most superficial and temporary fixes. Yes, sure you can put your curriculum online. That’s maybe the tiny tip of the iceberg.

Finally, I believe this moment gives us a sweet and priceless opportunity to show how much we love and care for one another. To share our affection and concern for one another as we each go through difficult and challenging circumstances. And to share our gratitude for the people who have touched us through this mystery of tango. I hope we’ll each find out own unique ways to do this too — to continue to embrace one another from our own homes.

Professional courtesy: Raising the standard in tango

There is a wide variety of people involved in teaching and organizing tango, with different motivations and different levels of commitment. As a result there is a huge range of different ways of communicating and collaborating.

I think our collaborations would be stronger if teachers and organizers raised the standard of professional courtesy between one another. Here are some simple habits that would make a big difference if applied consistently:

• Assume good intentions from your colleagues.

• Do what you say you will do when you say you will do it.

• Show up early for events you have been hired for. Don’t show up when the event is supposed to start, and certainly never late.

• Make professional introductions. Connect people who could help each other when there is mutual interest and openness.

• When you have been introduced to someone who can benefit you or your work, be courteous:

  • Communicate courteously with the person you have been introduced to.

  • Keep the person who made the introduction aware of the benefit that was created by their introduction.

• When asking for work or an introduction, be professional:

  • Present your offerings clearly. Write clearly.

  • Explain the benefit you bring to the community

  • Explain your availability and needs, including hosting and financial parameters

• Support other tango professionals on the social media platforms you’re active on.

• Greet your colleagues at milongas. Reach out to those you’ve worked with in the past when you will be sharing a city or event with them.

• Show respect for the people who have taught you and facilitated your learning. Consider what would be meaningful to them.

• Credit other tango professionals for concepts, language, movements or insights you learned from them, in classes and also in informal conversation.

• Thank people for the things they have done for you promptly and sincerely.

Professional courtesy also entails the basic maxim of not being a jerk. For instance:

• Do not assume that you should be comped for milonga attendance.

• Do not use tango as a currency. Do not assume if you help someone, they should dance with you.

• Do not ridicule or gossip about other tango professionals overtly or implicitly. Share your unique perspective without undermining others.

I believe that raising our standards of professional courtesy will increase our ability to create value together and for our communities.

Mitra Martin has been exploring tango since 1998. She is the co-founder of Oxygen Tango.

Establish Your Tango Community Agreements

I believe that when teachers and organizers are intentional and proactive about establishing Community Agreements, everyone has a better experience.

It can be hard to write Community Agreements. There are a lot of things to consider. I’ve put together a Tango Community Agreements template for organizers to build on based on my experiences, to help speed the process.

Community Agreements are things that everyone agrees on. For this to work, everyone needs to see them, and to agree to them. In a fluid and constantly-changing world of tango, this requires some special effort. For instance:

• There needs to be a system whereby every new person in the community (from beginners to milonga-visitors to teachers and guest teachers) sees, reviews, and agrees to the agreements. For instance, they can be written on a poster in the space that the host points out, or a handout that each new person receives. Or, they are on a web page which a new participant receives as part of an auto-email. Ideally, you’ll have people acknowledge their agreement with a Yes or a checkbox or a signature.

• Teachers, organizers, and anyone of high status in the community needs to model the agreements, and make reference to the content of the agreements regularly in public situations, so that everyone understands that these principles are active and alive in the community.

Unfortunately, people are sometimes unkind, cruel, even violent towards one another. Sometimes they have no regard for consent. Sadly, this a problem that affects our whole society and all our institutions. And occasionally it affects people who dance tango.

Teaching tango and building tango communities is a labor of love. It is physically and emotionally exhausting and financially precarious. Most people who dance tango do not have any understanding of how difficult and isolating it can be to be a tango organizer.

Building community through tango requires cultivating many different kinds of skills that have very little market value, like leading, following, DJing, putting on milongas, teaching, and so forth. I do believe that articulating and reinforcing the values for the community, promoting ways to be safe, and offering avenues for addressing small infractions, falls within the reasonable expectations of what an organizer should be responsible for.

If a serious incident takes place between two people who connect through tango, it is a disaster and should spark reflection, soul searching, and dialogue for anyone that it touches.

I believe that it is beyond the slender resources of a tango community organizer to arbitrate a serious incident. We are not trained mediators, counselors, health care professionals, Title IX professionals, or judges.

Finally, I’ll note here that I’ve invested many hours on in developing this set of Community Agreements which have not been compensated in any way. Although I’ve attempted to engage other community organizers in the process, most have, understandably, had very little time to dedicate to this. I conclude that our current market constraints and incentives lead people to work reactively instead of thinking about long-term systemic solutions. I do not believe it is effective to wait for bad things to happen, and then participate in a trial by social media.

Mitra Martin has been exploring tango since 1998. She is the co-founder of Oxygen Tango.

Does It Take Two To Teach Tango? No

Since tango is danced in pairs, people tend to think they need a partner in order to teach the dance. I directed a tango school and taught classes for almost 10 years and I’ve concluded that this is unnecessary, and usually actually counterproductive. Here’s why:

• I believe that one of the biggest prerequisites of teaching basic tango is knowing both roles. Yes, even for beginners in a Tango learning lab. So, if you’re teaching, ideally you already know how to lead and follow whatever you’re teaching.

• If one person teaches and the other assists, it’s very easy for learners to perceive values such as inequality or dominance in their interaction, which can be magnified by gender stereotypes. I don’t think these are healthy values for a tango community.

• If both people teach, then it takes an enormous amount of time, energy, and communication for two thoughtful and intelligent adults to create a lesson plan, an expenditure of resources that is usually not justified by the tango economy.

• Why model all the material with your partner, when you could be doing that with several different hardworking students who can probably do it well too, and who would all benefit from the opportunity?

• You might say that having an “assistant” is good because they can go around and work with students. Well, I haven’t found this to be the case that much, because usually assistants can only help half the students since they usually only know one role. Related to this, my point of view is that if you’re teaching group classes, part of your strategy should be to inspire plenty of intermediate role-switching dancers to come to those classes and learn by working with the beginners. So, there shouldn’t be a need for an extra person to do just that.

• If you are trying to help an up-and-coming dancer in your community lift their status by having them be your assistant, there are better ways to do that, like have them learn to DJ.

I’ll write later about why I think those festivals and marathons that hire Tango teachers as soloists (instead of as couples) are doing the right thing.

So, in case you wanted to start teaching tango in your community and you were waiting to find the perfect partner — no need! You can start now, by documenting your curriculum and doing a soft-launch of a learning lab.

Mitra Martin has been exploring tango since 1998. She is the co-founder of Oxygen Tango.

What is a Tango Learning Lab?

Tango learning labs are an emerging format with an emphasis on peer-to-peer learning. They bring together the strengths of a group class and a practica.

What is a learning lab?

Here are the main features of learning labs:

• Dancers have explicit levels, based on material they can teach (lead and follow.)

• Everyone learns half the time and teaches half the time (except first-timers and the facilitator.)

• When working with a higher level dancer, you learn a preset curriculum one-on-one from them.

• When working with a lower level dancer, you learn by teaching them material from the curriculum which you’ve recently learned.

• The facilitator assigns pairs based on self-reported level, so everyone is optimally matched, and announces new pairs on a schedule (e.g., every 15 mins.)

Benefits of tango learning labs:

• Learning labs get people deeply engaged with your community’s documented curriculum.

• Everyone gets to work on things that are at their learning edge. Teaching things you just learned is as challenging as learning new material — if not more!

• Dancers deepen their understanding of material by encountering the challenge of teaching it.

• Since the roles of teacher and learner are clearly delineated, useful information flows freely. (E.g., you avoid those weird situations where a beginner thinks they know more than an advanced dancer, or an advanced dancer is timid to give a beginner feedback because they’re not sure it will be welcomed.)

• Since everyone’s learning all the time, people stay humble.

• It unlocks the helpfulness of intermediate dancers and gives a structure for sharing what they know. Even if they only know a little, they still know a lot more than a total beginner!

• Learning both roles is built into the fabric of the format.

• Learning labs require practically no preparation for the facilitator — as long as you have taken the time to document your curriculum, which is something it’s probably worth your while to do anyway.

• They provide a clear path for hardworking learners to get experience teaching. Once someone has learned the whole curriculum, they can replace the teacher in the lab. Theoretically, this also allows the program to grow pretty easily to new locations (if you have marketing that supports that.)

Some problems with learning labs

This is a new format and it’s not perfect. Kinks to work out include:

• Quality control is the biggest challenge. People could teach the wrong thing. The ones teaching might not know the material well enough to teach it.

• What if a whole bunch of total beginners randomly show up? The format isn’t ideal for that, it messes up the 1:1 ratio since they won’t be able to teach at all.

• Some people miss the excitement and mystique of a charismatic focal teacher (personally, I think this is overrated) and the festive feeling of being part of a large group (which is usually impossible to create anyway since you don’t have enough marketing resources.)

What works:

1) Soft launch. Start inviting the public after you have 3 or 4 participating dancers who are at different points in the curriculum. (Teach them during practicas.)

2) 15 minute shifts. You can even just use a preset playlist with tandas and cortinas.

3) Curriculum they can interact with. Here are some ways to present the curriculum: on a whiteboard, on a poster, or on little cards that participants can take and hold during their shift.

4) Leveling. Let people self-report their level (instead of assigning it or testing them.) Just remind them that they are not allowed to choose a level where they wouldn’t be able to teach someone how to follow AND lead ALL the material in ALL the levels below their level.

5) Matching system. You need an easy way to optimally pair people up. A spreadsheet with formulas can help.

6) Mid-point notes. Halfway through the lab, it can be helpful if the facilitator shares something. They can demo an element in the curriculum, clarify a basic technique, or explain some aspect of how the lab works.

7) End-point show and tell. Inviting everyone to show “works in progress” from their lab at the end is a great way to wrap up the lab. I find that doing this without music makes it less intimidating. It’s amazing to see even total beginners demoing at the end of an hour!

A lot of these innovations have come from Oxygen Tango’s Famous Tango Learning Lab. With thanks to Dave, Magan, Alex, Thomas, and Andrei at Oxygen Tango, and Tommy and Christian and the Boise Tango community for their work in developing tango learning labs!

Mitra Martin has been exploring tango since 1998. She is the co-founder of Oxygen Tango.

The Problem with Tango Group Classes

I taught lots of tango group classes between 2005 and 2017. At one point I did some rough calculations and it looked pretty likely that I’d probably taught at least two thousand classes. There are definitely people who have taught way more, and for way longer, people I respect hugely. Those figures are just to give you a sense of what amount of experience my ideas are based on.

I put a lot of effort into learning how to teach group classes. I took all the “tango teacher training” programs I could find being offered at the time (not too many.) I read books on pedagogy and learning experience design. I observed tango dancers whose teaching I admired (Eric Jorissen, Brigitta Winkler, Tomas Howlin, Jaimes Friedgen, Daniel Trenner), transcribed their group classes word-for-word, studied patterns, and copied their strategies and language. I was invited to teach tango teachers at the Tango Teacher Training Coops convened by Sabine Ibes.

Ultimately I developed an approach to teaching group classes that felt authentic to my experience of tango. But along the way I started to deeply question the group class format. I stopped teaching group dance classes because I don’t believe the format is a very good way of supporting tango learning and community.*

Problems with group classes

• They feel the most fun if they are large. This makes them more festive. But it’s actually really hard to convene a large group because the market is small.

• In “beginner” group classes, where everyone is close to being an “absolute beginner” there is nobody who has enough skill to lead — unless the teacher literally dances with everyone, or has a crew of hardworking assistants doing that. (More about teaching and roles here.)

• In tango, what you are able to learn is in some ways constrained by what your partner brings to the table. I encourage everyone to cultivate an attitude of willingness to learn “from everyone and every experience” and this happens anyway on some level. When it comes to movement and techniques, however, in a group class, it often happens that a given random pairing of people in the class is not be very productive for one or both.

• Group classes can focalize the teacher in an unhealthy way. Especially, they incentivize immature teachers to posture, make absolutist and reductive statements, and build an aura of power and status that is unhealthy for the community.

• For teachers to get by, group classes need to at least partly serve as marketing for other services. Therefore there is a big incentive to make them really fun and entertaining, usually diluting or distorting the subtlety of tango in the process.

Learning one-on-one from a more experienced peer who follows a curriculum is the best way to learn tango. That’s what I believe, that’s what I’ve experienced, and this is reinforced by my understanding of Golden Age tango learning culture articulated by Daniel Trenner.

What group classes that work well have in common

I observe that those teachers who are able to build community through group classes succeed because their classes reflect the above insight:

• They create incentives that get higher-level dancers participating in lower-level classes, and get them partnering with the lower-level students.

• They are savvy and intentional about who they pair with whom, because they know that each person’s experience is dramatically affected by who they work with.

• They encourage role-switching and collaborative problem-solving which elicits a peer-to-peer dynamic.

• They teach using a clear curriculum that community members become familiar with the more experience they have.

• They model humility, curiosity, gender equality, and courtesy.

As my confidence in the group class format eroded, I also noticed that many of my colleagues were experimenting with new approaches to more structured practicas (guided practicas, X sessions, etc.). It seemed to me that we were all looking for a NEW format: something that brought together the strengths of group classes (facilitated pairing and material to catalyze exploration) with the strengths of practicas (peer-to-peer, non-hierarchical, exploratory mood, not mediated by an authority figure.)

In the next piece I’ll write about what the tango learning lab format is and how it creates a new kind of experience that brings learners and the community many benefits.

*There are some exceptions — I think group classes work reasonably well in the following contexts: couples-only classes; classes focused on solo drills (somatics or musicality); classes using a lot of lecturing/discussion.

Mitra Martin has been exploring tango since 1998. She is the co-founder of Oxygen Tango.

Role-Switching for Tango Beginners? Yes

Teaching tango roles: ideally, they learn to follow, then lead

Learning to follow requires developing an ability to notice and respond to what’s going on in your body, your partner’s body, and the music. It also requires a basic understanding of the grammar and movements of tango.

Learning to lead requires exactly same thing, AND another thing: to notice and respond to what’s going on in the space around you with the other couples. This makes learning to lead a little more complicated than learning to follow.

For that reason, the ideal learning path would have everyone learning to follow first, before they learn to lead. And indeed, as I understand it, this was how tango was imparted in the Golden Age mens’ clubs in Buenos Aires.

The problem with breaking your class into “leaders” and “followers”

Because of this, it’s illogical cut your group in two and have half of them “just” learn to lead and the other half “just” learn to follow. This will cause the “leaders” (conventionally men) to become extremely frustrated and disillusioned, because they are trying to learn something they don’t have the proper scaffolding for. And it will cause the “followers” (conventionally women) to become impatient and annoyed.

I believe this is the core problem with the unpleasant experience many beginners have, and a primary reason why tango’s growth is so limited.

Setting aside my belief that it’s outrageous in this day and age to auto-assign learning paths based on gender, I conclude from my experience that norming “some” (male) beginners to attempt to lead before they ever follow is unsound pedagogically and will give everyone a bad experience.

How to help your beginners learn

If there were unlimited intermediate dancers in every beginner class, we could mimic the Golden Age and have beginners (of any gender) always be dancing with (following) someone more experienced. This would be the ideal. And, I definitely encourage organizers to try to find ways to inspire intermediates to join beginner classes.

In the absence of these resources, I believe that switching roles before rotating partners is the best alternative, as many wonderful teachers do.

I believe that having everyone learn both roles from their very first tango class creates many benefits for learners, for the community, and for organizers.

Benefits of a learning culture in which role-switching is the norm

1. Role-switching is not a neutral activity. It carries with it a hidden curriculum which I believe is the bedrock of a tango community: a whole set of extremely positive values that will infuse your community and create huge benefits, including

   • Collaborative problem-solving

   • Curiosity

   • Respect

   • Empathy

   • Equality

2. When everyone switches roles and begins to have an embodied experience of these values listed above, there’s less room for attitudes and behaviors that are toxic to community and learning. Switching roles undermines entitlement and complaining, and it edges out people who come to class just to “consume” dancing by “just” following. You can’t “consume” dancing, you can only cocreate it.

3. Normalizing switching roles makes our community more welcoming, less heteronormative and more inclusive of all genders.

4. Switching roles is practical for organizers! You can create a wonderful, satisfying, and rich experience no matter who shows up. The extra administrative and marketing work required to “role-balance” a class is too much to expect from a tango community builder, in addition to being bad for learning.

5. Most serious, good, legit tango dancers dance both roles. It’s very helpful to model, promote, and normalize this for beginners from the very beginning.

A few more notes

If someone (male or female) wants to “only” learn how to follow first, I can understand why — it’s easier to follow than lead! I think they should learn via private lessons. I don’t think it’s appropriate for them to “demand” this in group settings, because doing so is equivalent to also demanding that the organizer supply you with a skilled leader, OR that a fellow unskilled beginner serve as your leader, which is usually an awful experience for them.

Also, I think that for intermediate and advanced dancers it can be very productive to focus on refinement in one role or the other, but that these refinements are much more beneficial if they come from a grounding in both roles.

I know lots of people who won’t agree with me, and I don’t mind. Over the past fifteen years of building community I have discovered that they will find their own way, and that by staying true to my beliefs, the communities I choose to focus on will thrive.

Mitra Martin has been exploring tango since 1998. She is the co-founder of Oxygen Tango.

Why Document Your Tango Curriculum

There are lots of different perfectly valid ways to teach the first 30+ hours of tango - and beyond. Each teacher experiments and finds a way that works best for them.

You’ll probably have your own opinion on when it’s “best” to teach the cross, close embrace, inline walking, ochos, music. And probably you’ll also adapt and tailor your plans to different learners’ needs and interests. But, even if your curriculum is pretty fluid it’s still a good idea to document it. Here’s why.

Benefits of documenting your basic tango curriculum

1. You will learn a ton by doing it. Actually writing down what you teach, in what order, will cause you to think freshly about your teaching strategy and what’s behind it, reflect on what’s worked in the past, and get clearer about your POV.

2. You’ll create valuable shared language in the process. When you and your community have common language for techniques and movements, it’s much easier to work together. This shared vocabulary will help students learn and retain ideas.

3. A documented curriculum makes it easier for people to help each other learn. Helpful and skilled dancers who are willing to help build community can help beginners more effectively if the curriculum is clear and available. Having a documented curriculum facilitates peer-to-peer learning, which has always helped tango thrive.

Here’s the thing as you’re getting started: your documented curriculum doesn’t need to be perfect. It’s okay if it evolves — expect it to, quite a bit, for the first few years! Frame it as a continuous work-in-progress that your community has special access to.

How to document your tango curriculum

There are a few different ways to go about it:

1. Use brief, memorable names for exercises, movements, techniques, concepts. Invented language is fine if you need it, but no need to invent new words when there are already good words for something, like “crossed system” or “sacada.”

2. Describe the movements. Write blurbs to explain what happens in the movement verbally, or use a tango notation system of your choice. (Or create one!) Reference the names of techniques and concepts in these blurbs.

3. Capture the element visually. Photos aren’t great for documenting a curriculum, unless, say, you want to show different kinds of embrace. Instead, I suggest brief videos, like we did in the Tango Manual, or even GIFs like Oxygen Tango uses for the Famous Tango Learning Lab.

4. Make the curriculum available. You can publish it on a private page of your website, in a shared Google doc, on an Airtable. It can be great to have a written version at the studio - you can make an abbreviated one and print it with one element on each card, or simply as a poster or on a whiteboard. You can even self-publish a little workbook if you want!

Once you’ve shared your curriculum, talk about it! Use it in class titles, reference it in classes, point toward it in emails and social posts. This helps reinforce the concepts and the importance of having shared language.

Does this sound too difficult? If you are new to curriculum writing, it’s a great idea to start by working with other people’s curriculum. For a long time I worked with Jaimes Friedgen’s excellent beginner curriculum, while simultaneously learning as much as I could about other ways of approaching beginner curriculum. Talk with people who have been doing this awhile, practice, test stuff out, and eventually you and your community will have a wonderful curriculum as a reference point that will support amazing tango learning and growth.

Mitra Martin has been exploring tango since 1998. She is the co-founder of Oxygen Tango.