Friends, Colleagues, Dancers,

2026 marked many an anniversary for me: 70 years on this planet, 50 years as a dancer and community organizer, 45 years incorporating Body Mind Centering to movement practice,  40 years immersed in tango,  30 years developing a pilates practice as part of my foundation.

Here I am, a dancer, still, after all these years.

I’ve danced my way through Afro, Modern, Jazz, Tap, Contact Improv, Tango, Swing, and Salsa, achieving a Masters in Ensemble Dance (dance as a group skill) along the way. My life has always been driven by the intersections of dance, sustainability, and community; I’ve helped build communities rooted in dance and collective practices for over 40 years of travel, touring, and teaching in a myriad of contexts, including 20 years of formal education as a high school and university professor.

Early in my career I wrote dozens of unfunded grant proposals. In order to achieve my goals, I had to don my entrepreneurial hat and committed to turn to self-funding for all my projects. With this approach, I’ve already realized many projects. I’ve organized cross-cultural tours in Argentina and Cuba, facilitated dance festivals across the globe, and ran a successful company that produced a popular tango catalog and employed large numbers of staff. Through all of this, I found myself continuously returning to what I think is best described as accidental anthropology.

This ultimately led me to focus on developing this Archive, inspired by my habit of filming as many of my experiences as I could during my travels, studies, and residencies in Argentina and beyond. These recordings are now being digitized and edited for today’s Tango lovers, like you. I’ve digitized about half of my collection so far and uploaded them to this online database. These videos allow viewers to witness the early days of Tango’s modern revival through not only my eyes, but through first hand accounts from those who survived the dark politics of 20th century Argentina and their younger proteges, who reemerged as tangueros with the return of democracy.

Throughout the 40 years of this project I have had to learn many jobs - preservation and archiving, digitization of analog audio and video, editing and organizing digitized material - to name a few. Yet every time I think I’m approaching a conclusion, I find that there are always more jobs to learn and technology to adapt.

In recent years I’ve struggled with how to complete this project. I recognize thatI've been aging out of the ability to nimbly adapt, and have to confront my own abilities at 70 years old. My body has been consistently challenged, as many who pursue a dance career know two well. I now feel the wear from the perpetual cycle of injury and recovery of being a dancer and community organizer for half a century; traveling lifestyle and diet, car accidents, hate crimes that have left me beaten half to death, managing a multigeneration housing coop, caring for my elders, more car accidents, falls, illnesses, the pandemic, a shoulder dislocation, and years of decline with AFIB. These all take their toll.

And still, the preservation and ongoing revival of Tango has continued to be one of my highest priorities. I have to recognize my shifting capacity for staying up to date on learning the latest technical practices, maintaining an online presence, and preparing new digital material. And so, much like the milonguero elders of the 20th century, it is time for me to pass on the torch to a younger generation of dancers interested in preserving the Archive, and hopefully giving it a chance to flourish into the future.

And so, 2026 brings one more milestone: the Archive’s first newsletter under new leadership. Let me introduce you all to Phoenix, who will lead the next era of building the Archive both online and here at my Tango House. She will manage our relationship with the virtual world alongside a team of staff and volunteers.

I will still be involved in offering the context and history for new archive content and helping make decisions when I understand the technical needs of the process, but I will also practice surrendering when the work is beyond my expertise.

I remain busy writing many volumes of my legacy, fiction and non-fiction, historical and invention. With my elder care responsibilities completed, I am now the elder. I will return to some touring, now as one of the still living master teachers.

There is nothing like confronting mortality to bring one back to the body, to living in the here and now. During my nearly 50 years of professional life on the road, I have met so many of you as students, friends, colleagues, and organizers. It saddens me that you are all so far away, and that keeping in touch has been mostly impossible. And you, fellow tango lovers are invited to come and study here in beautiful Western Massachusetts, one of the nicest places on the planet.

Lastly in this age of the Internet, you can use your voice to let people know that my Archive is happening, and to bring attention to it. This is crucial.

Please know that I live in a constant state of gratitude - gratitude that I still survive and thrive, that my life here is good, that the work I’ve done has been successful, and that the ripple effects have left an enduring legacy for my work. Thank you for whatever part you have played, or will continue to play, in my journey. I’m beginning to plan some kind of celebration for the Summer of 2027. :)

In Community, Peace, Understanding, and Cooperation in this challenging world.

Daniel Trenner

Florence, Massachusetts

Summer 2026