A cabeceo to tango’s future | Art by Nesli Erten

Awaken Tango: An emerging tango innovation ecosystem

Where might our tango world be ripe for something fresh and new? We are interested in creating, curating, and sharing new approaches to everything from pedagogy to how we gather, habits of thought and attitudes toward the dance, ways of presenting tango, and so on. The goal is to help ignite meaningful tango innovation.

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Where we’re going

Our vision: Healthy individuals, partnerships, and communities actively living out the loving and co-creative spirit of tango.

Our mission: To carry out research, foster innovation, and pilot new forms of collaboration, so Argentine Tango can reach its potential to benefit humanity.

Here are some things on our backlog that we would like to develop and share with the tango community, if there is sufficient interest and support!

  • Discoveries from experiments in tango pedagogy (formats/curriculums/rubrics)

  • Resources to meet the needs of tango club leaders

  • Models for restorative/transformative justice in our communities

  • Supports for innovators prototyping new inventions

  • Testing out forms of collaboration/competition/coopetition that fuel innovation

  • New experiments in showcasing the essence of tango through video

  • Curating and publishing tango thought-leadership content

What we value

  • Building a strong foundation with deep roots even over responding to tempting possibilities

  • Joyful co-creation between friends even over producing fast and efficient results

  • Committed, devoted collaborators even over scattered attention from individual geniuses and charismatic stars

  • Long term transformation even over reduction to quick wins

  • Deep dialogue with high quality listening even over light and loose idea exchange

Where we’ve been

Awaken Tango came out of several conversations between Mitra Martin and Korey Ireland and friends around 2018-2019. Our first project was The World Tango COVID Research Study in 2020, with Meredith Klein and several volunteers.

Between 2021 and 2022 we sparked things like: uLab Coaching Circles for tango organizers, 1:1 buddy calls to facilitate networking and collaboration, the Tango Wiki project, and experiments in network-building, with Tracey Peever, and Daniel de Kay, and Mara S.

Between 2020 and 2024, we have carried out the Inner Experience of Tango research project with Avik Basu.

About the editor

Mitra Martin

Learn more at mitramartin.com

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Awaken Tango runs experiments and publishes research and insights to support healthy individuals, partnerships, and communities in actively living out the loving and co-creative spirit of Argentine tango.

People

Research, innovation, Argentine tango. Writing a book about kids and technology. My name means "sunshine" in Persian. Follower of all things numinous.