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A sensuous treat for the senses
M¡longa
Birmingham Hippodrome
**** IF sex was a dance it would surely be the
tango. There are other forms of dance that are more
beautiful, more elegant, more romantic or tender, while some modern
dance routines seem to tak It is courtship dance and mating ritual rolled
into one – foreplay in footsteps. Tango is the soul of Argentina so you would
hardly expect a Belgian-Moroccan choreographer in the shape of
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui to be the man behind M¡longa, ostensibly a form of
the dance, which as is Argentinian as the Casa Rosada.
But perhaps Cherkaoui brings fresh eyes to a
dance form which courses through every Argentinian vein. And if you have Belgian-Moroccan choreographer,
why not two Polish composers in Szymon Brzóska adb Olga Wojciechowska
who contributed tango pieces to the score along with celebrated musical
director and pianist Fernando Marzan who, finally, comes from Argentina. The score also includes three pieces by legendary
tango composer Astor Piazzolla, unintentionally linking the opening and
closing of the International Dance Festival Birmingham 2014. The festival was launched in April with the
premiere of a new work, Quatraine, from Birmingham Royal Ballet
with music from Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires and
his music returns for the final theatre performance of IDFB. Cherkaoui brings in five pairs of world class
tango dancers and then, just as he was an outsider embracing the spirit
of Argentina, he also includes two contemporary dancers, Frenchman,
Damien Fournier and Silvina Cortés, who hails from Buenos Aires but has
been a dancer and teacher of contemporary dance and ballet in the USA
and France for almost 20 years. The pair are not tango exponents, but their
expertise in dance brought a different approach, a new look at the age
old steps. In the programme notes Cherkaoui says: “Tango is all about
the embrace; the connection between two dancers and the tacit
conversation carried out by their bodies moving across the floor.” His contemporary dancers spoke their tango with
an appealing accent. Dance,
It was effective in itself but his video and
visual work was quite stunning. We had cut outs of the dancers which
went from full colour to silhouette in an instant or had shadows
shrinking from the outlines as each character’s cut-out disappeared into
the gloom.
We had multiple images of a pair of dancers on
huge video screens behind them to create a corps de tango from one pair.
There was a ballet of multiple images on a huge front cloth screen
filling the entire Hippodrome stage moved around by a dancer like those
letters in a word square we had as kids. Then there were the travelling images of towns
and cities zooming by with dancers in front appearing more urgent than
they were and, dancing in a small area, appearing the travel miles. If tango is really a conversation between bodies
than M¡longa is a piece that talks to the senses. There is no story, no real purpose, just a celebration of dance and tango and it is fascinating to watch. Apart from the dances by couples there are also trios of men and women with some spectacular moves, one man and two women, two women and a man five couples in unison or conflict and any combination inbetween. And as for the steps of the couples – wear shin
pads and a cricketer’s box if you try any at home. The speed of
footwork, movement and dance, the locking and flicks between legs and
the way one body twines around another like a silk scarf is just a
mesmerising spectacle and a classy highlight to IDFB’s final weekend. To
24-05-14 Roger Clarke
23-05-14
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inspiration from the soft porn end of musical expression but when it
comes to sensuous and smouldering passion, raw emotion, you can’t beat
tango.
brilliant
as it was, was only part of the show though. Eugenio Szwarcer’s set give
us a stylised representation of a Buenos Aires dance hall, a black empty
stage sometimes with and sometimes without chairs around the edges, with
the excellent five piece orquesta típica, under Marzan, at the side.