Portrait by Andrei Andreev

About Mitra

Mitra Martin is a deeply resourced tango teaching artist and community development partner.

She has immersed in many of the interconnected disciplines of tango: leading, following, DJing, teaching, organizing, mentorship, and dance theater. Many of her students have gone on to be festival dancers, DJs, and teaching organizers.

Mitra currently directs research and editorial at an emerging innovation ecosystem, Awaken Tango. She consults leaders, teachers, and community developers who are seeking to develop wise ecologies for learning, she teaches curious dancers, and she dances for sheer joy. 

Mitra began her journey into tango fresh out of college on a business trip to Buenos Aires in 1998. She pursued tango in New York City before moving to LA in 2003. For 10 years (2008-2018) she dedicated her life to tango full-time, establishing a vibrant local community in West Los Angeles with Stefan Fabry and collaborators. 

During this time, Mitra dove fully in the business side of directing a tango school: attracting beginners; creating motivating programs for all levels; collaborating with local teachers and organizers; organizing innovative programs with artists from Argentina, Europe, and the US; producing a regional benefit milonga and tango retreat event. Mitra personally has taught/facilitated over 3000 hours of tango instruction and has taught tango in Argentina, Germany, and performed and DJed all over the US, and inspired thousands of practitioners with her content. 

She led the think-tank side of Oxygen Tango which carried out thousands of hours of collaborative research and innovation related to new forms of pedagogy. This investigation led to many contributions that increase retention, lower cost, and create a better learner experience including the Tango Challenge program, a 12-week beginner course that has been offered approximately 40 times across two communities (LA and Minneapolis) by six different facilitators with around 200 graduates and >90% retention; Tango Learning Labs, a culture-building learning model that solves problems caused by the group class format; and a user-friendly tango notation system that enables transcription and generativity. 

To complement her tango she trained with Anne Waxman in Alexander Technique and Stefan Fabry in Contact Improvisation. Mitra’s influences in tango include: Carina Moeller, Daniel Trenner, Jaimes Friedgen, Brigitta Winkler, Estudio Dinzel, and the nuevo analysis cohort. Her influences in pedagogy are Maria Montessori and Viola Spolin. To complement her community engagement work, she has trained with Diana Leafe Christian in consent-based decision-making, J. Kim Wright in non-adversarial agreements, and Andrei Andreev in nonviolent communication. Mitra has a Certificate in Theater and Dance from Princeton University and lives in Western Massachusetts as an Artist-In-Residence at the Trenner Tango Archive. 

The tango school I co-founded

Select Performances

Our Morning Practice

Tango eras

1998-2003 - Fateful trip to Buenos Aires, learning and dancing obsessively, NYC and the numie game!

2003-2008 - Los Angeles arrival, learning to lead and DJ, contact improv, dance theater and performance art, early experiments teaching. THE GLOBAL TANGO MAR VISTA CENTER FOR TANGO ARTS AND EXTREMES

2008-2017 - The Oxygen era, the Tango Challenge, researching notation systems, Tango slumber parties…

2017-2020 - Experiments in peer-to-peer learning, glimmers of Awaken Tango, COVID study

2020-2025 - Back on East Coast! Tango house adventure, teaching sabbatical, dancing just for joy!!

2025 - Reawakening with new insights, new perspectives, new questions, new strategies, a pure intent to be in service.

Some fun memories…

San Francisco Tango Exchange - presenter | Tango de los Muertos (Boston) - facilitator | The Tango Teacher Co-Op (Minneapolis) | San Francisco Tango Marathon - moderator | The Heartland Tango Festival - teacher, performer | The Baltimore Tango Solstice - teacher | Stone Soup Tangotopia - facilitator, teacher | CONNECT (Ashland) - lecturer, teaching facilitator | LA Tango Marathon - DJ, panelist | Portland Tango Festival - instructor, performer | The Houston Tango Festival - facilitator, performer | The Denver Tango Festival - instructor | The Albuquerque Tango Festival - instructor | The San Diego Tango Festival (2012-2017) - beginner bootcamp, performer | Kansas City Spring Fling - instructor | Caltech Tango Club - instructor, advisor | Google - tango instructor | The Princeton Club of Southern California - instructor | The Ford Theater - arts engagement facilitator