01.03.2019
Tango Forever
„Ostap danced. Above his head, palm trees creaked and tiny, colourful birds fluttered by. Ocean liners jostled against the Rio de Janeiro harbour. The rosiny squeak of the Wheel of Fortune could be clearly heard above the city. It was a thin, musical sound, which suddenly turned into an airy unison of violins.“ Ostap Bender, the great schemer and hero of the immortal novels The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf will forever be associated with the tango. It is no great surprise, then, that the festive chamber concert Tango Forever, which will take place on 9 March in the Fireplace Hall, will open and close with works from the film of The Twelve Chairs: Tango Rio and Love’s Cruel Tango.
„This isn’t the first time we’ve turned to tango“, says concertmaster Natalia Dudik, who planned the programme for the evening. „But this year, the programme for our tango concert is much broader. All three of the Mikhailovsky’s creative ensembles will be involved: the ballet, the opera, and the orchestra. Maria Bolshakova is choreographing the dances, a string quintet will perform, Alina Makhauri and I will be at the piano, and Artur Bochkivsky will take the guitar parts.“
Tango was born in Buenos Aires in the late 1880s. For a long time, it was exclusively the preserve of street musicians and was passed on by memory alone, so many variations on tango existed. The first person to write the tango down was Ángel Villoldo. The tune of the Argentinian tango El Choclo later achieved worldwide fame, becoming one of the best-known melodies of all time, while Villoldo himself is now revered as ‘the father of tango’. Tango was initially a dance for men, but then became a duet for a man and a woman. Tango is now known as a partner dance: after all, „the man might lead, but if he feels no impetus from the woman, he will not take a single step.“
„We want to show our audience the different faces of tango. On the one hand, we want to emphasize just how vivid and evocative tango can be, presenting it as a dance, as music ‘made for the feet’. On the other hand, we hope to show that it can also be a highly cultured genre of music, in which the tango rhythm is just the underlying foundation. It’s difficult to dance to that kind of music; it’s rather avant-garde“, says Dudik.
Concertgoers can look forward to works by Kurt Weill, Astor Piazzolla, Henry Himmel, Isaak Dunaevsky, and Roland Dyens. On stage will be opera soloists Natalia Mironova, Ekaterina Egorova, Boris Stepanov, and Alexander Kuznetsov, joined by ballet dancers Anna Novosyolova and Denis Aliev.
„This isn’t the first time we’ve turned to tango“, says concertmaster Natalia Dudik, who planned the programme for the evening. „But this year, the programme for our tango concert is much broader. All three of the Mikhailovsky’s creative ensembles will be involved: the ballet, the opera, and the orchestra. Maria Bolshakova is choreographing the dances, a string quintet will perform, Alina Makhauri and I will be at the piano, and Artur Bochkivsky will take the guitar parts.“
Tango was born in Buenos Aires in the late 1880s. For a long time, it was exclusively the preserve of street musicians and was passed on by memory alone, so many variations on tango existed. The first person to write the tango down was Ángel Villoldo. The tune of the Argentinian tango El Choclo later achieved worldwide fame, becoming one of the best-known melodies of all time, while Villoldo himself is now revered as ‘the father of tango’. Tango was initially a dance for men, but then became a duet for a man and a woman. Tango is now known as a partner dance: after all, „the man might lead, but if he feels no impetus from the woman, he will not take a single step.“
„We want to show our audience the different faces of tango. On the one hand, we want to emphasize just how vivid and evocative tango can be, presenting it as a dance, as music ‘made for the feet’. On the other hand, we hope to show that it can also be a highly cultured genre of music, in which the tango rhythm is just the underlying foundation. It’s difficult to dance to that kind of music; it’s rather avant-garde“, says Dudik.
Concertgoers can look forward to works by Kurt Weill, Astor Piazzolla, Henry Himmel, Isaak Dunaevsky, and Roland Dyens. On stage will be opera soloists Natalia Mironova, Ekaterina Egorova, Boris Stepanov, and Alexander Kuznetsov, joined by ballet dancers Anna Novosyolova and Denis Aliev.
