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'Tango Argentino' Recalls the Allure of a Lost Age
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10497 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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2 / 1986 |
1,034 Words |
| Author
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Gregory Speck
Gregory Speck is a freelance arts writer based in New York
City. |
For those who find that the contemporary interpretation of popular dancing is often ludicrous and better left to the sights and sounds of futuristic discotheques, "Tango Argentino" might recall gentler days when cheek-to-cheek romance held its beauty and attraction for civilized night owls. Indeed, this legendary if barely known national dance of South America's most cosmopolitan country presents a silent if eloquent challenge to the lurid behavior one sees on the dance floors of the 1880s. The many forms and styles of "The Tango"--that elegant, rhythmic, polished dance of controlled passion, born in perhaps marginal circumstances of 1880s Buenos Aires--offer an evening of unsurpassed entertainment for Broadway audiences.
This surprise hit of the season contains a theatrical history of the twentieth century's most provocative dance form. Soon to leave New York on a national tour, "Tango Argentino" offers thirty talented dancers, singers, and instrumentalists who combine the many threads of lineage which constitute the nation of Evita. As the line goes, "The Argentines are Italians who think they speak Spanish, pretend they are British, and wish they were French."
By the Roaring Twenties the tango had found its way to Paris and became all the rage, adopted by the beau monde as the period's finest expression of hot blood and cold control--the essential elements for sizzling romance. Of course, it was not until after World War I that the "smart set" of Buenos Aires deigned to recognize even the existence of the suddenly fashionable blend of intricately interwoven steps, defiant but plaintive melodies, and tantalizingly brisk syncopations. Once the sophisticated Latin choreography was associated with Rudolph Valentino, however,
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