Show tango is quite a different beast from the genuinely sultry Argentine tango danced in ordinary milongas. I get that. But even I wasn’t prepared for ‘Immortal Tango’, the latest extravaganza from ‘Tango Fire’ creator German Cornejo – an incoherent grab-bag of random routines performed in large part with no evidence of the ‘eternal passion’ of the show’s subtitle, and sometimes no evidence of actual tango.
I think the idea was to create an evening of old-school, variety-style entertainment. What we get is a cheesy, Buenos Aires tourist trap show, like a collection of all the filler bits from a Sunday night ‘Strictly…’ results programme – some big ensemble numbers (skirts split to the crotch, vacant expressions), a duet or two, a guest singer spot, a bit of humour – piled up with no attempt to see the bigger picture of the show.
The programme promises Hollywood glamour. Cornejo’s concept of this is to dance to music from the movies, with a sprinkling of classic (clichéd?) tango tunes along the way. So what music from the movies does he pick, you ask? Abba’s ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ (because it was in ‘Mamma Mia!’), the theme to ‘Schindler’s List’, ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’… the car crash of schmaltz that is ‘The Bodyguard’s ‘I Have Nothing’ followed by ‘Titanic’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ (which gets given a dance beat half way through), to name a handful. These are performed live, with a singer, Antonela Cirillo, whose heavily accented English can be a challenge.
The group routines are generally rather stilted and follow no rhyme or reason – an Edwardian picnic scenario, a masked ball, something moody in black leather for Adele’s ‘Skyfall’. Tango is often jettisoned in favour of aggressively sexy, modern musicals-style posturing. We get a couple of pantomime dame/Trocks-style turns from Carlos Debat, stumbling round the stage with some of the male dancers. Most surreal moment of the evening, though, goes to the routine with six of the men dressed in red monks’ habits passing around one of the women dancers, as she totters about en pointe, all conducted behind a bit of diaphanous curtain.
It’s ultimately quite frustrating. Cornejo and his partner Gisela Galeassi lead 14 tango dancers - world champions among them – and, particularly when individual couples are given the spotlight, you do see some astonishing tango – a giddy blur of kicks, spins, flicks and twirls – and some impressively acrobatic show dance moves. But amid all the grinding gear shifts and cloying sentimentalism, there’s just not enough.
BY: SIOBHAN MURPHY