​Tango Guild Pop-Up Weekend

​An experimental weekend for people shaping tango communities, or feeling called to

​Sponsored by Awaken Tango and Tango & I | May 7-10, Minneapolis

​🔮 Why this, why now?

​Teaching and organizing tango can be exhilarating… and quietly exhausting. This pop-up is an invitation into a different way of working: more exploratory, more collaborative, and spirited.

​We need more well-resourced community facilitators, more heart-centered dancers stepping into community leadership. We need to reduce organizer burnout, and stop working in siloes and reinventing the wheel all the time.

​In a survey in 2025 local teachers highlighted the importance of professional development and peer connections.

​This event exists to help facilitators 1) develop leadership capacity, 2) evolve pedagogic paradigms, 3) access valuable frameworks, and 4) create capacity to do strategic experiments that support learners’ motivation…and, most importantly to 5) nourish our connections with one another to meet the needs of the moment!

​🦹🏼‍♀️ Who this is for

• ​tango teachers and organizers (established or emerging)

• ​dancers who find themselves “holding the center” of a community

• ​people curious about new forms of practice, pedagogy, and collaboration

​🔥 The program

​Subject to evolution and adaptation to participants

• ​Peer learning in the tango pedagogic tradition. Why it’s essential, what are the pitfalls, strategies and tools for adding it into your community as a standalone offering (learning labs) or a layer (element of a guided practica). Learn from many examples and experiments.

• ​Program design for tango cohorts. Learning science demonstrates us that people need concrete goals, clear deadlines, and supportive structures, but the way we organize tango learning doesn’t reflect that. A crash course in how to design a tango program that retains.

• ​Notation systems and their value to a community. Intro to the language that underpins the Tango Fairytale Game. Basics of how to structure a practice/investigation/study circle.

• ​Leadership coaching circle. Building on the work of TheoryU, experience a peer-led coaching circle format that supports leaders in accessing the deeper/complex layers of a tango leadership challenge, a crucial practice in tango professional development.

• ​Experimental hour. Since practicas have devolved into “milongas” or “practilongas,” we need to carve out spaces dedicated to true investigation. This experimental hour, with an open-ended approach to music, will be fueled and powered by participants investigation themes.

​✨ What the weekend includes

• ​A pre-event Zoom gathering to connect and warm up

• ​Workshops and prácticas structured as learning labs

• ​Advanced tango games and creative investigations

• ​Time for conversation, connection, and social dancing

​The weekend is also the amazing Minnesota Tango Music Festival, so you can look forward to beautiful live-music at evening milongas.

​⏳ Schedule (draft)

​Friday (please be ready in Minneapolis by 6pm)

• ​Evening: Opening circle, intention setting, peer learning fundamentals

​Saturday

• ​Morning: Guided practica with 1:1 learning layer

• ​Afternoon: Light lunch, notation system basics

• ​Early evening: Program design crash course

​Sunday

• ​Morning: Potluck brunch and experimental hour

• ​Afternoon: Sharing projects-in-progress, peer coaching circle, closing reflections

• ​Evening: Tango guild happy hour

​🎪 The container

• ​Limited to 20 participants

• ​Designed as an intentional, immersive, peer-rich environment

• ​Hosted with care, humor, and attention

​If you’re unsure whether this is a fit, we’re happy to talk.

​Sign up to secure your space

​🐧 Registration $297 until April 19th. Includes pre-event Zoom circle and prep activities, and learning labs/masterclasses/structure practicas on Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday afternoon, as well as open-ended experimental blocks and a Sunday evening happy hour. (From April 20th on, registration will be $375.)

​Recommended: Bring your Tango Fairytale Game card deck. Use the discount code TANGOANDI for $20 off for event participants only. You can also get one during the weekend.

​❤️ About us

​This project continues the tradition of one of the first U.S. teacher training conferences, Tango Teacher’s Co-op which Sabine led for three years, and extends frameworks originally developed by Mitra and collaborators at Oxygen Tango. Sabine and Mitra have been collaborating together for years applying and adapting new models and frameworks for learning, from the Tango Challenge and the peer-to-peer tango learning lab.

​Find and reach us

​Mitra 💌 mitra.martin@gmail.com ☎️ (310) 854-2466

​Sabine 💌 sabine@tangoandi.com ☎️ (612) 501-7956

​Learn more about Awaken Tango and the Women’s Tango Guild.