The choreographer Leonardo Cuello is the most exceptional, interesting and even coherent figure of contemporary scenic tango. It would take too long to describe in detail the long career of this artist, who not only has been running his own company for seventeen years, but has multiplied his works in official dance companies, in television series and abroad.

And now it just premiered in Buenos Aires, Astor, we, on a series of scores by Piazzolla, some, fortunately, not too well known. The work was created in 2021 and streamed until it was finally brought to the stage.

Neck production

Astor, we it seems to open a new course in the choreographer’s repertoire; or maybe not, and it’s just a bridge to new or different things. This requires an explanation:

So far, the production of Cuello has been split between a series of rather short works – some of which are delivered in the most spectacular format of the tango show, with its incredible physical abilities – and others of a character who could be described as plot or who at least they describe a situation, as in the case of Sundayin which a popular suburban picnic spawned a series of delightfully humorous images.

Also in this category are February in your laughwhich portrays the noisy preparation for a country carnival dance, or In your armswith his dramatic love encounters in a spooky nightclub.

San Buenos Airesfor its part, it is a long-winded work based on the arrival of European immigrants in the first decades of the twentieth century, e Inside the Tango it is poetically inspired by the stories of five real women: Ada Falcón, Tita Merello, Gricel from the homonymous tango by José María Contursi, Sabina Olmos and Eva Duarte.

The last two also had important scenographic resolutions, very “realistic” in the first case and more abstract in the second.

a breaking point

this brand new Astor, we has something of all these aspects that Neck masters so admirably: there is a kind of narrative, there are dance skills and there is also a very heavy set designin the visual but also literal sense of the term: they are large iron structures that the dancers use and rearrange in the different scenes.

The breaking point is that the narrative presents itself as much more enigmatic, or more symbolic than the previous works; and in this sense the so-called “solos” (in the vocabulary of stage tango, for some inexplicable reason, a duo of dancers is called “solo”) appear as strong wedges, full of skill, in that dreamlike atmosphere.

Except perhaps the one performed by Ayelén Alvarez Miño and José Lugones on the beautiful theme The Feluremore like the general atmosphere.

Astor us It’s a great job, wonderful in all its aspects: the cast of dancers, so open to the demanding interpretative needs of the choreographer; the rich costumes of Nora Churquina, the lighting project by Magalí Perel and the marching band of Martín Jurado, who play with Piazzolla music adding a world of urban sounds, inevitable in that universe.

A passage, a bridge, a continuity in other forms? Who knows. The truth is that it is really worthwhile to accompany the path of this artist.

(INFO: Every Thursday in June and July at 8 pm at the Cultural Center for Cooperation, Corrientes 1543)

mfb