Boston Balboa is pleased to announce that TinkerBal is BACK for the Now Times. We’re starting small (with four instructors) but mighty (peep *which* instructors!):

Shani Brown, Jennifer Lee, Teni Lopez-Cardenas, and Sylvia Sykes

Book your travel to Waltham, MA October 18-19, 2025, for small-group classes with these four badass instructors, plus a Saturday Night Shuffle dance and a Sunday Speakeasy social.

REGISTRATION

Registration will work a bit differently this year, in hopes that we do not crash our server yet again.

Step 1. You fill out the Registration Request form.

Step 2. We run a random LOTTERY to allocate spots in the workshops.

Step 3. We announce the lottery results. Everyone else is on the wait list.

Step 4. Y’all make travel plans for Boston either way, because people get in off the wait list EVERY YEAR, and Boston is lovely in October!

Here are the important dates you need to know:

• Registration Request form OPENS Monday, July 21, at midnight (ie, Sunday night).
• Cutoff date for the LOTTERY is Wednesday, July 23, at 11:59pm Eastern. That means you have THREE DAYS to fill out a form at your leisure. No panicking!
• Lottery results will be announced on or before Sunday, July 27. We will email everyone also.
• If you get a spot in the workshops, you will receive an email with instructions for ways to pay for the workshops.
• The form will remain open until just before the workshops, so that latecomers can add themselves to the wait list, just in case. EVERYONE is welcome at the evening dances on Saturday and Sunday, so come dance with us!

PRICING

TinkerBal 2025 will have 3 price tiers: Standard, Patron, and Budget. Standard is $190, Patron is $210, and Budget is $150.

If you have extra disposable income, please register at Patron level. Those dollars will help us support Budget registrants!

If you are strapped for cash, please register at Budget level. And if even our Budget price will create hardship for you, please let us know that, and we’ll get in touch directly to see what we can work out. (We are aware of the current capitalist hellscape, and want to help everyone tinker with their Bal if they wanna!)

If you are hanging in there someplace in the middle, please register at Standard level.

Don’t worry about paying at all until you get an email from us telling you that you’ve gotten a workshop spot in the registration lottery! All these details will be repeated then, and we’ll send instructions for what to do.

COVID SAFETY

Boston Balboa continues to require suitable masks (N95/KN95) at our events. We have monitored COVID wastewater levels since 2020, and though we hope that someday levels will stay low enough for our mask requirement to lift, that day has not yet arrived. We value the health and wellbeing of everyone in our community!

Therefore: TinkerBal classes will require masks. The Saturday Night Shuffle dance will require masks. The Sunday Speakeasy will be in a bar/restaurant, and will be mask-optional for the obvious reason.