53. FOREVER TANGO
When
you enter the Walter Kerr Theatre you are faced by the increasingly unfamiliar
sight of a formal Broadway curtain, bright red, fringed in huge gold tassels, and
highlighted with gold flourishes along its swags. Aside from several
stunning gowns worn by the female dancers in this return visit of FOREVER TANGO,
this is the biggest blast of color on display in this dance and concert show,
which first appeared on Broadway in 1998 (458 performances and four
previews) and returned in 2004 (114 showings plus six previews). The
present show is set for a limited run of ten weeks. A comparison of its 2004
program with the current one reveals that perhaps half the show is new, and the
other half old, although almost the entire company has changed. Luis Bravo, who created the original and has been with the show throughout its history, remains the director. The choreography, as in the past, is credited to "The Dancers."
Walter Kerr Theatre, W. 48th Street.
The cast is composed largely of
champion tango couples, and each gets to demonstrate its innovative versions of
Argentina’s passionate national dance. Unlike its earlier incarnations, which
had no specific stars, the present FOREVER TANGO lists three guest stars,
singer and five-time Grammy winner Gilberto Santa Rosa (to be replaced on July 30 by Luis Enrique), and
dancers Karina Smirnoff and Maksim Chmerkovskiy, the exceptional Ukraine-born
pair who became famous on TV’s DANCING WITH THE STARS.
There are several company numbers
that involve all or most of the dancers, but most of the evening’s dance
sequences are performed by couples, each more sensual, dramatic, and physically
enthralling than the other. The women, of course, with their heads of radiantly
gorgeous hair, are icons of sexy glamour, dressed in stunningly slinky gowns
from which perfect, stiletto-heeled legs thrust, twist, and kick in surprising
permutations, as supple derrieres suddenly shimmy faster than the speed of
light. Their men, often dressed in black, sometimes with rakish fedoras, are
sleek panthers, their Valentino hair so slick you could skate on it, capturing
a sense of lust and danger as they smoothly maneuver their women around the
stage in ever more flashy combinations, with each routine ending in an
inventive pose suggestive of domination and submission. As appropriate for the
tango, the mood is deadly serious, with eyes focused on some ulterior goal, or
locked with one’s mate in intensely electric contact. Everyone is conscious of
their own gorgeousness, and during the curtain calls, several female dancers,
especially the spectacular Victoria Galoto (she’s on the program cover with Juan Paulo Horvath), revel
in it. Two dancers, Natalia Turelli and Ariel Manzanares, however, do a couple
of comically inflected dances that allow some smiles to break into the
otherwise somber proceedings.
Maxsim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff. Photo: Walter McBride
Juan Paulo Horvath and Victoria Galoto. Photo: Walter McBride
There is no set to speak of, just a
black backdrop on which stars are sometimes illuminated, and a two-tier
platform for the 11-member orchestra of four bandoneons (something like a cross
between a concertina and an accordion), two violins, a viola, a cello, a bass,
a keyboard, and a piano; Víctor Lavallén, the bandoneon player-conductor,
displays his virtuosity at several points. The dancers perform downstage of the
musicians, who remain in view throughout. Since all but one of the musicians is
gray or white-haired, their appearance makes a striking contrast with the youth
and beauty of the dancers.
The show is not all dance by any
means. Guest star Gilberto Santa Rosa, wearing a tuxedo and carrying a mike,
does several solos (all the songs are in Spanish), and a rather hefty portion
of the evening is devoted to instrumental performances. These non-dance
segments bloat the evening to a too-long two hours and 15 minutes (with one
intermission). Still, few people chose to leave during the extended, danced-through curtain calls.
But even without the concert-like
performances, a show like this, no matter how talented or good-looking the
dancers, is likely to pall unless you’re an avid dance fan. If you’re addicted
to TV dance contests, you may find a couple of hours of this stuff delightful,
but, remember, the dancing is all tango (or tango-like) so the lack of variety
can eventually be problematic, there’s no thematic through-line that contextualizes
what you’re seeing, and all the singing is in Spanish. By the end of act one, I
felt I’d had a good time and had seen enough. Sitting through act two of
FOREVER TANGO began to make me feel like the title might actually come true.