Can you describe the concept behind the upcoming El Tango?
The concept is quite abstract in nature. One of the most important elements in Tango is the way the movement is connected to the music. One could say that it is the music that generates the movement. With Moveo’s contemporary dance, this is not commonly the case, however for El Tango I have picked the most basic argentinean tango elemenets and fused, strethched and manipulated them in order to create movement vocabulary that merges the two styles together.
You are more associated with contemporary forms of dance – what made you choose tango as this new show’s theme?
Through time both styles have evolved and this connection is what drew me to delve into creating a contemporary tango movement. Seeing that both Tango and contemporary dance have similar attributes when it comes to contact and improvisation, I fuelled these links as much as I drew them apart in order to create a language which I hope is unique to its style.
Will you be introducing elements of contemporary dance into the show? Seeing as the choreography for El Tango is created in collaboration with the dancers, their choreographic input will be heavily influenced by the contemporary genre.
The whole aim of the production is to fuse what the dancers are most comfortable doing with tango, so yes contemporary dance will feature through the interpretation of Tango movements, feelings, sensuality and most of all musicality. Can you tell us about the narrative driving it?
We are all trapped in our very own love story; some triumph after falling for the forbidden fruit, whereas others resist or allow it to be their ultimate demise. Either way, temptation is everywhere and escaping it is the only impossible thing. This is the prevailing theme present throughout EL Tango, portrayed trough the sensuality of tango, combined with the rawness and fluidity that contemporary dance offers. Will it be performed to an original score? All the music will be performed live by six very talented musicians.We have chosen a fusion of Tango music including some of Astor Piazzolla’s signature tracks.
What are the biggest challenges in preparing this kind of show?
Well, challenges are most of the time what makes the work move forward. I suppose the biggest challenge was to keep a constant discourse between argentine tango concepts and contemporary dance.
Having said that, this is one of the very reasons why I chose to work on this concept. Being constantly challenged is arguably what keeps my work exciting. Since I am always trying to re-invent my work choreographically, and having the majority of the dancers who are predominantly contemporary trained, getting them to gel the two styles to make them as seamless as possible proved quite tricky.
El Tango takes place on Friday May 25, Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 at 8pm at The Manoel Theatre, Valletta.