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Eurydice’s Dream
EURYDICE’S DREAM is an apt title for the show by Blessed Unrest currently playing at The Interart Theatre. It signals the sort of reality that will be experienced if you immerse yourself in the play, but is never used as an excuse for incoherence or obscurantism. This collectively developed piece has a recognizable theme that…
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María de Buenos Aires
That which is good about Beth Greenberg’s production of Ástor Piazzolla’s MARÍA DE BUENOS AIRES for Opera Hispánica is so very good that one doesn’t even want to think about that which is awkward or even bad about it. The supertitles are dreadful, no matter how difficult the surreal imagery of Horacio Ferrar’s libretto is…
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Tango Mediterraneo
Tango Mediterraneo is a welcome addition to the options we have in New York to listen to live tango music. It has a distinctive sound, sharp and individualized in its instrumentation, and is fronted by Stratos Achlatis, the accordionist and singer, whose dulcet – I want to say honeyed – voice adds just the right…
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Astoria Tango Club
On my first visit to Buenos Aires, an expatriate American that I became acquainted with said to me that the city had a “theme”, which he smartly suggested to me was “nostalgia”. He pointed to the Kennedy-era cars on every block, the coffeehouses with their bow-tied waiters, the grand Parisian architecture, and, although he scarcely…
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Tangolandó • Fain-Mantega
It was, to be sure, a night of non-standard tango at Joe’s Pub. Tangolandó, fusing tango song with a distinctive Afro-Peruvian rhythm, closed out a program that began with the Dúo Fain-Mantega, consisting of piano and flute, the latter one of the early instruments in tango orchestras, along with the harp and violin, but not…
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Tango Bar
Thursday evening last was the “grand reopening” of TANGO BAR at Villa Della Pace, where this weekly gathering of tango singers and musicians had for a time been held on Sundays. This was, in any case, my first time out to the event, which emphasizes tango singing of the most down-to-earth, neighborly, unpretentious, and occasionally…
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Buenos Aires Restaurant
If I understood the situation correctly I was, a number of years ago, the first customer at Buenos Aires Restaurant. Excited upon walking down 6th Street and discovering that an Argentine parrilla was about to open in my neighborhood, I jotted down the phone number and called as soon as I got home. It was…
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Tangolandó
We all know, or think we know, what tango is, and TANGOLANDÓ, just out as a digital release, has some of the best tango singing by one of the best New York based Argentinian artists, Sofía Tosello. Fewer of us know what landó is: it is a driving Afro-Peruvian rhythm that is instantly recognizable once…
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Tango Conspiracy
On a late Wednesday night in the Malbec Room at Novecento, I listened for the first time to Tango Conspiracy, a band fronted by the guitarist-singer Jimena Fama whose music is self-described as “Electro Dub,” “Funk,” “Tango,” “Lounge,” and “Bassa Nova.” My prejudices for dancing tango bend toward the traditional repertory, but I must say…
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8cho Aerial Tango
What the Brenda Angiel Aerial Dance Company of Argentina does in 8CHO AERIAL TANGO at the New Victory Theater is not easy. There are multiple movement vocabularies in play, a variety from the aerial arts and a huge number of steps and figures from stage and social tango. The obvious tension to be exploited is…