They huddle in various degrees of embarrassment until someone provides them with lingerie
They huddle in various degrees of embarrassment until someone provides them with lingerie. Once kitted out in camisoles and stockings, they take quite cheerfully to the tango. But they’re still hapless victims, so they dance without bite.A later scene brings on the revolution. The outraged populace cross the upper level, waving red flags, only to be routed by a military policeman dancing a sort of tap goose-step.In all the excitement, there isn’t a single exhibition number for the first half-hour.
We applaud with relief when they get down to it: Zotto and Soledad Rivero are stylish dancers In couple dancing, he is best in the bold, emphatic moves. The fast, stamping footwork looks sharp in his solos but those raised knees are hectic when he’s with a partner Rivero is elegant and at first rather impersonal. The structure is familiar enough, but Miguel Angel Zotto’s choreography barely uses the dance. The give and take between couples can be sensational, but it’s not the kind of drama that Zotto is looking for.
Couldn’t they just dance? The new show by the Argentine company Tango por Dos comes so laden with plot and significance that the dancers hardly have room to move. Tango una Leyenda is a series of scenes illustrating the history of tango and Argentina. The Changeling, along with other examples of this company’s fine work, comes to the Barbican later in the year, and is highly recommended To 24 April (0117-902 0345). Aping the main action in its deployment of blackmail, rewards for service rendered and women forced to choose between love and duty, this strand is robustly integrated, and the production pulls off a startling coup at the end when those same gates that have shut people out clang together to lock everyone – cast and audience – into the world-as-hellish-madhouse.In another psychologically appropriate feature, Beatrice-Joanna and De Flores die straining to gaze at each other – her official compunction undercut by a defiant fascination with a man who has become her partner in more than crime.
