REVIEW: TANGO... | MARIAH L. RICHARDSON

REVIEW

Dance St. Louis –

Tango Argentina

Review by Mariah L. Richardson

My first exposure to the seductive dance of tango was while watching Gomez and Morticia Adams dance a tame version of it in their living room on the 1960s sitcom, The Addams

Family. Gomez extolling his love to Morticia while she held a long stem rose in her mouth. Even though as a kid I understood that the dance was about desire and seduction, it paled in comparison of what I witnessed last Saturday night.

Dance St. Louis, continuned their 56th season with Tango Argentina at the Touhill Performing Arts center, February 5, 2022. Eight sensational dancers and a quartet, led by Fabrizio Mocata, lifted a pandemic weary crowd, here in St. Louis.

The two-hour show went by in a flourish. Starting with a dance featuring all eight dancers. Then we were enthralled by lead dancers, Guillermo de Fazio and Giovanna Dan. The speed and the tangle of legs and you can see how this feels like a forbidden dance. The precision, the beaded backless dresses added to the heat of each dance. The dancers spin and dip and all the while looking deeply and lovingly into their partner’s eyes. Their desire made you want to blush as if you are a voyeur secretly witnessing the pair’s exchange of physical pleasure. The troop consist of dance couples, Marcos Pereira and Florencia Borgnia, Andres Bravo and Arita Apel, and Maximiliano Alvarado and Paloma Berrios. Their names alone suggest the exotic to us plain spoken English names alike Bob and Jim. there is joy and romance in being close, heart to heart, lips almost touching, mask less, free, with only the dance on our minds.

Founded in 1966, Dance St. Louis has been bringing the finest dance of the world to St. Louis audiences for more than 55 years. Dance. Dance St. Louis also conducts a broad range of education programs for the St. Louis community. Each year, the Bayer Fund Education Outreach Program introduces schoolchildren to the magic of dance through in-school residencies and mainstage performances. For more information, please visit https:// www.dancestlouis.org.

For media inquiries, interviews, press images and/or video, please contact Sarah Thompson at sarahtproductions@gmail.com or 314.884.8306.

The band; Diana Seitz on violin, Moshe Shulman on bandoneon, Dominic Martinez on bass, and Mocata on piano. The music was the foundation for the dance, but the band also coaxed and cajoled the urgency of tango in their instrumentals that played when there were no dancers. The show not only sizzled with dance they also injected humor to round out the show.

Dance St. Louis gave us a night of hot, delicious delight on a cold, snowy evening. As we watched, boosted and masked, we were transported to a time and space where