Too Sexy
PHOTO: Soledad Centurión and Ray Sullivan in tango combat
Tango Undressed is a tease. The title of Miami Contemporary Dance Company’s popular work promises nudity -- and from the first glimpse of the dancers, clad in white briefs and hidden behind a curtain from the waist up, the audience is waiting. When will the briefs drop?
Not until the final moment, as it turns out, and only from the hips of choreographer and artistic director Ray Sullivan, who coyly turns a bare back to the audience before his private parts have a chance to make an impression. But that’s beside the point. (Update: thanks to the reader who pointed out that everybody dropped their clothes; it happened so fast, this critic missed it!)
This silly bit of business is the logical conclusion to the over-the-top sexiness Tango Undressed delivers throughout. Sullivan, who developed a passion for the social dance while living in Argentine, explores the tango as a vehicle for a wide range of emotions. He evokes the social world of the milonga, the tango party, where dancers meet, mingle, and go their separate ways. At times he plays the tango more or less straight, at others he transfers the tango vocabulary to bodies leaping, writhing, and rolling across the floor.
Often, Tango Undressed is on the edge of self-parody. Masked Improvisation, a duo danced by Sullivan and Argentina-trained company member Soledad Centurión begins with crackling electricity as the pair crawl on their bellies toward each other like soldiers in combat, but near the end, when Sullivan pretends gleefully to crack a whip at his adversary/lover, what started as an incisive commentary on tango’s sado-masochistic elements turns into a cliché. Tango Undressed isn’t just sexy; it wants to make sure you know it.
Luis Vivas is less eager to tease. Listed in the program as a “specialty tango dancer,” Vivas smoulders without appealing to the audience, his energy directed inward. Watching Vivas dance with Sullivan in “Not Often Spoken,” a duet that returns to the origins of tango as a dance between men, I realized the difference between being sexy in South Beach and in the Buenos Aires of one hundred years ago when the tango was born: SoBe is all show; Buenos Aires, mysterious brooding.
Tango Undressed is less an experiment in melding the movement vocabulary of the tango with that of contemporary concert dance and more a tale of the desires of two cities. If, at times, the show gets to be a bit too much, well, as the tangomaniacs would say, what can you do? How could tango come to South Beach and not get naked?
Tango Undressed is a tease. The title of Miami Contemporary Dance Company’s popular work promises nudity -- and from the first glimpse of the dancers, clad in white briefs and hidden behind a curtain from the waist up, the audience is waiting. When will the briefs drop?
Not until the final moment, as it turns out, and only from the hips of choreographer and artistic director Ray Sullivan, who coyly turns a bare back to the audience before his private parts have a chance to make an impression. But that’s beside the point. (Update: thanks to the reader who pointed out that everybody dropped their clothes; it happened so fast, this critic missed it!)
This silly bit of business is the logical conclusion to the over-the-top sexiness Tango Undressed delivers throughout. Sullivan, who developed a passion for the social dance while living in Argentine, explores the tango as a vehicle for a wide range of emotions. He evokes the social world of the milonga, the tango party, where dancers meet, mingle, and go their separate ways. At times he plays the tango more or less straight, at others he transfers the tango vocabulary to bodies leaping, writhing, and rolling across the floor.
Often, Tango Undressed is on the edge of self-parody. Masked Improvisation, a duo danced by Sullivan and Argentina-trained company member Soledad Centurión begins with crackling electricity as the pair crawl on their bellies toward each other like soldiers in combat, but near the end, when Sullivan pretends gleefully to crack a whip at his adversary/lover, what started as an incisive commentary on tango’s sado-masochistic elements turns into a cliché. Tango Undressed isn’t just sexy; it wants to make sure you know it.
Luis Vivas is less eager to tease. Listed in the program as a “specialty tango dancer,” Vivas smoulders without appealing to the audience, his energy directed inward. Watching Vivas dance with Sullivan in “Not Often Spoken,” a duet that returns to the origins of tango as a dance between men, I realized the difference between being sexy in South Beach and in the Buenos Aires of one hundred years ago when the tango was born: SoBe is all show; Buenos Aires, mysterious brooding.
Tango Undressed is less an experiment in melding the movement vocabulary of the tango with that of contemporary concert dance and more a tale of the desires of two cities. If, at times, the show gets to be a bit too much, well, as the tangomaniacs would say, what can you do? How could tango come to South Beach and not get naked?