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The dancers in \u201cTango After Dark,\u201d an Argentine production that opened a two-week run at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday, are skilled, seasoned professionals. Their biographies list the many competitions they have won and the many shows in which they have performed, most with \u201ctango\u201d in the title. What distinguishes \u201cTango After Dark\u201d from these other tango shows? Not much.<\/p>\n
This one is directed and choreographed by German Cornejo (no relation to Herman Cornejo, the Buenos Aires-born ballet star who was at the Joyce last week). He and his partner, Gisela Galeassi, are joined by four other couples and an onstage band that plays adaptations of compositions by the great Astor Piazzolla.<\/p>\n
\u201cTango After Dark\u201d contains all that you might expect from a tango show. There are elegantly dressed couples moving as one in ballroom holds, sensually cool up top while their legs flick like grasshoppers, sneaking between the legs of their partner as often as possible, the women\u2019s legs periodically wrapping around the waists of the men. Routines are punctuated by deep lunges and dips.<\/p>\n
And since this is presentational tango, the women\u2019s legs sometimes extend above their heads, stretching past 12 o\u2019clock. And the men don\u2019t just lift the women in low flight, allowing them to doodle with their feet in the air. They lift them overhead, one handed, or swoop them in loop-de-loops \u2014 feats met by mid-number applause.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This two-hour show has a nominal theme. A singer, Antonela Cirillo, welcomes us to Buenos Aires, \u201cthe city that never sleeps,\u201d and most of her songs, which she sings in Spanish, refer to the city. At the start and several times later, a dancer in a Louise Brooks bob pretends to play a bandoneon, the accordionlike instrument central to the sound of tango.<\/p>\n
This theatrical idea, both inane and inept, is as imaginative as \u201cTango After Dark\u201d gets. Each couple is given a featured spot. There is a four-man number, with a dash of the male-male partnering traditional in tango. There is one for a woman and two men. There are group numbers during which the dancers circle and change partners carousel fashion. And after intermission, there is more of the same.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
All this would be tolerable if the dancing were better. Presentational tango tends to strip the dance of its intimacy, of the sense of a conversation in the language of the feet. That\u2019s the case here. All the chemistry is put on, and while the costumes keep changing, the couples aren\u2019t sufficiently distinguishable by style. These dancers express passion mainly with muscle, and when their traveling footwork gets fast, it gets frantic and messy. The soul of tango \u2014 the subtle play of electric musicality and wit against a sense of fatedness, what the tango lyricist Enrique Santos Disc\u00e9polo characterized as \u201ca sad thought dancing\u201d \u2014 is mostly absent.<\/p>\n
The music doesn\u2019t help. Cirillo is more impressive pop belter than chanteuse. The drum-heavy arrangements of Piazzolla aren\u2019t improvements, and at least on opening night the band had trouble locking into the same groove. The musicians fared better when not accompanying the dancers, sampling more of Piazzolla\u2019s wilder, avant-garde side. That music isn\u2019t really meant for dancing, but if Cornejo had taken on the challenge, it would have been a welcome sign of boldness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
As it is, \u201cTango After Dark\u201d is basically an overextended nightclub floor show, the kind offered to tourists in Buenos Aires, now offered to stay-at-home tourists in New York.<\/p>\n
Tango After Dark<\/strong><\/p>\n Through March 9 at the Joyce Theater; joyce.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n