"GlamourTango"
Society for Ethical Culture
New York, NY
November 9, 2012
By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2012 by Carol Pardo
The seventh annual Latin American Cultural Week got under way with "GlamourTango", a revue incorporating film, music, song, and dance. Its fifteen numbers, lasting less an hour and a half (not counting the speechifying endemic to opening nights), performed entirely by women from around the globe (Israel, Germany, the U.S. as well Latin America), as salute to the role of women in tango.
The first number earned that salute. Singer Roxana Fontan emerged, dressed from the waist up like a lady who lunches in a beautifully cut suit jacket with her hair sprayed into submission, but from the waist down, like that lady with her hair down and wild, in a calf-length black skirt slit as high as it could go. Her rendition of "Maria de Buenos Aires" (excerpted) got toes tapping and blood flowing, proof that the music of tango itself just makes you feel like dancing. And Fontan made every gesture count; a simple flicking of the lower leg, a move repeated often during the evening, registered like the lash of a whip.
Unfortunately none of the five dance numbers, choreographed by Mariana Parma and danced by the choreographer and Mariana Galassi, Ana Padron and Karina Romero, packed the same punch. The first of them was the best: two "men" sparred for the attention of a lone woman. In the end, all three went off together. The "men" were believable; there was no wink wink letting on that they were women and the dance combined whiffs of loneliness, attraction, braggadocio and sex in a way that felt true. A duet between a short "guy" done up like someone out of "Newsie"s and a women in flowing pink, was too flaccid and balletic, candy floss melting in the sun. In another number, a contraction straight out of Martha Graham looked equally out of place. Were the couples in a quartet supposed to be dancing in canon or in unison? It was impossible to tell. Granted, Hurricane Sandy may have deprived everyone of some rehearsal time. It is also true that the auditorium is not suited for dance, even less so when the depth of the stage, a large alcove, is occupied by the musicians, leaving the dancers only a long narrow ribbon of floor to call their own. Such irritants have sometimes bred pearls, alas, not here.
The video portion of the show, by Federico Bongiorno (the only guy in the credits) was not enveloping enough to transport anyone to Argentina, though when the pace of the evening lagged, one could play "Where’s Evita? with the montage. And the evening did lag, unable to build to a climax worthy of its opening.
The star of the show was the live music, particularly that which used the full quintet: Polly Ferman on piano, Eleonora Ferreyra, bandoneon, Iris Ornig on double base, Ina Paris, violin and Tali Roth, guitar. The memory of it still makes me feel like dancing.
