Tango the night away | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

Review

For tango aficionados, it doesn't get much better than Tango Feeling, a performance by Argentina's Estampas Portenas company last week as part of Bangkok's 12th International Festival of Dance and Music. Tango is a dramatic dance, with sharp movements, quick turns, disciplined changes, as if brimming with barely restrained underlying passion. After flamenco, salsa and a Brazilian contemporary dance troupe, it was the fourth Latin dance performance of recent weeks and lived up to its billing. Well choreographed by Carolina Soler, the mix of classical and folkloric moves were set to traditional - perhaps macho - tango themes. Despite the interpretational freshness, the performance had an intentional retro 1920s feel.

The first act, set in the Salon Porteno of Buenos Aires, was called "The Milonga", a faster version of the tango. The footwork was, in fact, dizzying, as the six couples rotated through short sketches - a womaniser down on his luck, a couple in love, a street fight - that merged seamlessly from one to the next. The couples performed either in choreographed patterns or in pairs, as the others sat at tables to the side, ostensibly watching and commenting to each other on the centre-stage action, or rotating off stage to change costume. The men wore various suits, often with bland grey platform shoes, the women in increasingly colourful and revealing slit-leg dresses, with high-heels that didn't look at all comfortable or conducive to the quick-fire steps and leg twirls.

The five-piece band, called Viceversa, had Ariel Enriquez on piano, Lautaro Greco on a South American concertino called the bandoneon, Juan Miquens on double bass, Lucas Furno on violin and Juan Pablo Saraco on guitar. The amplified violin and bandoneon gave the jazz a higher register than what many are used to - to beautiful, melodic effect. It would be well worth seeking out Viceversa recordings on CD, so uplifting was the music.