The Tango Touch (2015-17)
The Tango Touch project is a performance-based investigation of the Tango dance in various public and performance spaces of the city of Melbourne. As an artist migrating to Melbourne I tried to develop a connection between myself, my art practice and my new city. Tango offered me an opportunity to experience the inner heart of the city as a “stage” where people move following certain rhythms and trajectories.
I have been observing on almost a daily basis people waiting for trains, taking trams, crossing streets, walking on pavements or in laneways, etc. focusing on their feet and legs and chests and arms etc. and on the ways in which they physically connect or don’t connect to each other. I have been listening selectively to the various soundtracks of city life - humans and machines - and to their surprising overlappings and mergings. The more I dwelled in the city, the more I felt part of it and perceived a creative tension between the spontaneous potential of people’s movements as “dance” and the instrumental dimension of movements as determined by the dominant patterns of city life (straight lines, scheduled times, public announcements, etc.).
During this time in Melbourne I have also engaged in a series of pedagogical performative activations and in the envisioning and organisation of social participatory events within the Melbourne Tango community and the network of Tango teachers. These events were aimed to activate spaces for social inclusion and collaboration while “queering” the tango scene by contributing to a culture of experimentation and playfulness.
To know more about the pedagogical and participatory areas of “The Tango Touch” project:
Pedagogical performative activations and participatory events
THE TANGO TOUCH: PERFORMING PUBLICNESS (2)
THE TANGO TOUCH EXPLORATION
2016, Carlton Club (Melbourne)
Interactive performance with video installation, with Eddie Perez, Valentina Vitolo, Natasha Eracleous, and Shebnem Tuncel (see project page)
Part of Deakin University Art and Performance “Five Rooms” installation, and in collaboration with Melbourne Fringe Festival, this dance-theatre interactive performance at the Carlton Club reproduces movements, sounds and images characteristic of Melbourne CBD public spaces mixed with the tradition of Argentine tango to explore interactively how a shared experience of the sense of touch can enhance our bodily connection with self and others and trigger creative forms of engagement with the rhythms of city life.
CROSSROAD PUPPETS
2016, Melbourne CBD
Site responsive performance (with Valentina Vitolo, photos by Jorge De Araujo)
Two Tango Puppets meet at the crossroad of Flinders St and Swanston St (Melbourne). An impromptu experience of touch amidst the well rehearsed movements of pedestrians.
UNDERPASS TANGO: ATTUNING TO THE MOVEMENT OF THE WORLD
2017, Clifton Hill Underpass (Melbourne)
Site-responsive performance
This video shows the process of sensory attunement I am going through in the attempt to explore the connection between the inside and the outside of my bodily experience in the underpass of the Clifton Hill metro station (Melbourne). In this improvised inquiry, conducted through the movement framework of Argentine Tango, attuning to the world is approached as a process of listening to how sensory inputs are affecting me and how I can connect with the bodily sensations felt moment by moment.