Who: Estampas Portenas Tango Company and Quatrotango
Where: Nelson Mandela Theatre at The Civic
When: Tuesday and Thursday, 8pm. Friday: 6pm and 9pm. EndsSaturday: 5pm and 8pm
Rating: ****
There's nothing like a tango cocktail for a quick pick-me-up. The return of Estampas Portenas Tango Company, a year after its first appearance here, could have been a damp squib, given that it's not a radically different show.
Once again Carolina Soler's impeccable choreography,
and almost all of her direction, is the clincher, twinned with the marvellous musicianship of the Quatrotango
quartet.
The opening Milonga sequences failed to totally ignite
on Friday night and the mock male fight scene was far too stagey. Yet straight off the plane, having ostensibly lost the singer, who was listed in the programme but didn't appear on stage, this company really came into its own in Part Two: The Show.
Cased in swags of red velvet and lighting to match, the 10 dancers and the virtuoso young musicians, who don't shy away from experimentation, set out to seduce the senses. And they did just that.
The intimacy of this social dance form is not lost in translation in the theatrical arena.
Thighs transform into tentacles; emotions are made flesh; wildly complex rhythms are ingested and expelled as elastic elegance encased in sublime artistry.
Amid all the spectacle and the thrills of the aerial choreography there's always room for the exceptional, when that fine line between personal, technical and artistic expression fuse inextricably and the dancer lays
down the gauntlet of brilliance.
In the Gallo Ciego (I think it was) Florencia Roldan, seamlessly partnered by Juan Malizia, turned into an electric blue streak of smoking sensuality.
Somebody (a musician?) quietly breathed a brava. Brava indeed. This dazzling couple and fellow newcomers, German Cornejo and Carolina Giannini, join the three other distinctive pairings, now familiar to Joburg audiences, in a classy outpouring of phenomenal footwork, liquid sexuality and musical lovemaking
from Buenos Aires.