The Tangueros Monthly Newsletter
international edition - september 2001

11

Corazon Quebrado, according to El Moplo

The forthcoming performances of Corazon Quebrado at the Neuchatel Dance Festival in Switzerland, give to an unforgettable TQR contributor from Lugano (Buenos Aires, of course) the chance to send out the Milongueros' official comment about a plentiful diatribe the readers won't have a job identifying. El Moplo no claudica, as they use to say there, to find fault with anybody, and even less with his perpendicular co-workers at La Quinta del Ñato. Here are, therefore, some offprints from the long interview TQR will issue in its entirety before the snow flies - over Fort Lauderdale on July 4th.

In Tango we don't have prizes, study grants, endowments or public funds at our disposal; that spurs us on the eventful relationship with practical life.
Not counting the linked industries, namely the traditional triad baile, merca and telo, Tango artists don't step back from any job: there are singers who drive a colectivo, dancers in the undertaking business, bandoneonists who are chemists and tango instructors who are police informers.
New opportunities knocked up with the recent art of theatrical Tango. The Orezzoli and Segovia's Tango Argentino's worldwide success, has either engouraged several brocha gorda painters, cello players and small-time artisans to try the stage, and also has unawares provided them with the pattern to stick to: a little historical sketch, a little book of attractions. A whole series of copycat shows has followed. Looking forward the Asphalt Muse to visit those reiterating authors at least for one time, the theaters' goers will keep thinking that Tango is the usual jumble of cabaret numbers and school misunderstandings
Quite higher in status, and closer to the titled Dance and Ballet conception, is indeed the Nueva Compañia Tangueros' work. With Corazon Quebrado they have created a real Ballet d'Action in Tango, integrating all the elements, such as the Cortazar's script and the Pugliese's music with the set and the choreography, wonderfully. Mostly the choreography, i think, renders the secret sense of the danced life of us Milongueros, which is continuous creation. Beauty and romance, instead of the regressive and puerile Tango peluche that rules over the Buenos Aires' tanguerias of today.

CORAZON QUEBRADO
September 20 and 21, 2001 - Neuchatel International Dance Festival
Nouveau Theatre de Neuchatel, Switzerland
ph. 0041.91.7917315

 

Corazon Quebrado, according to NCT

Corazon Quebrado was the name of a famous milonga in the Buenos Aires of the late Forties. The Osvaldo Pugliese Orchestra used to play there; so just the best dancers in town dared to go and dance in such an exclusive ballroom. Whoever wanted to belong to this caste of aristocratic outsiders had certainly to be a very special tanguero, with the elegant style that Pugliese's music required and displaying "a pain in the button-hole", as the Corazon Quebrado's goers used to say.
On the other hand, the Mauro and Celina's love story has nothing special at all: it is a classic "boy meets girl" at the ballroom, or a dramatic "star-crossed lovers' love" in Buenos Aires, with no balcony and no shilly-shally poison; nevertheless, as time goes by, the story reaches a certain symbolic grandeur - let's call it pathos - thanks to the Milongueros who watch, comment and sometimes fight against the happenings, in the same way a Greek Choir would do: without the Tango, wouldn't life be a gross mistake, as Jorge Luis Borges always certified? Tango Ballet, Mélo, Feuilleton, Soap Opera, Novelòn... when love and death are involved, anything goes since the Tango is a three-minutes melodrama in itself.
In the Tango-Novelas of fifty years ago, Rodolfo used to sing with the Carlos Gardel's voice as well as the compadrito used to walk along the neighbourhood in the Uria Heep's style. Nowadays, the Milonga of the Broken Hearts's romantic dancers are celebrating - with their own pain in the button-hole - the real end of all the illusions and the love passion's thorny beauty.

Mariachiara Michieli and Marco Castellani
Buenos Aires, April 2000

Corazon Quebrado
Tango Ballet created, directed and produced by Mariachiara Michieli and Marco Castellani
after the short story The Heaven's gates byJulio Cortazar

choreography by Mariachiara Michieli
music by Osvaldo Pugliese
music direction by Carel Kraayenhof
lights by Chris Young

 

The Tangueros Quarterly Review n. 4

Chris Young, the NCT technical director who lives there, assures us that the snow didn't fall on Fort Lauderdale the forth of July this year either. So, here it is what you will find on the The Tangueros Quarterly Review new issue, which is on line since the last week.

 

The school new year

The Mariachiara Michieli will go back to teaching again in grand style from the beginning of October till the end of next May 2002, with a two months break between December and February for the NCT rehearsals in Buenos Aires and the italian tour. Mariachiara will have recourse to two of her dancers - Silvina Aguera and Sebastian Romero - as assistants. So far, some weekly lessons are scheduled in Mestre and Belluno and a few specific workshops in Torino, Udine and other cities. We will give you the defined calendar in the next Newsletter; in the meantime, for whoever would like to apply here are the right numbers.

 

The green carnation

It is in the nature of symbols to be symbolic - Marcel Duchamp

Venezia, September 8 - On this suitable date for the Italian Government and its authorities (who actually have flocked in full), the Balthus retrospective opens today at Palazzo Grassi. To be honest, this exhibition would be a swagger of no consequence if there wasn't a revealing detail: on the advertising poster, which is a painting by Balthus himself, the vile Genoese accountant stands out by surprize in white overalls and equipped with a plank. The pleonasm is intentional: evidently, power artists are no longer content with the abstruse symbolism of the statue of Justice on the courthouse's gable, and prefer to produce some more accessible allegories for the employers, in adherence and celebration of their evil doings.

 

NCTANGUEROS HOMEPAGE NEWSLETTERS JUL/AUG 01