Dance reviews: A hallucinatory house of mirrors and a trip to sultry Buenos Aires tango halls
At The Cultch, Tentacle Tribe gets kaleidoscopically inventive; at the Playhouse, a masterful live band accompanies a show that roots out the soul of Argentina’s beloved art form
Tentacle Tribe’s PRISM. Photo by Do Phan Hoi
Social Tango. Photo by Paola Evelina
The Cultch and New Works present Tentacle Tribe’s Prism at The Cultch Historic Theatre to October 27; DanceHouse and VLACC present Social Tango at the Vancouver Playhouse to October 26
TWO TOURING DANCE SHOWS in Vancouver this week provide a real trip—one in a more metaphorical, hallucinatory-human-kaleidoscope journey, the other in the way it transports you to the achingly romantic dancehalls of Buenos Aires.
Over at the Cultch on Wednesday night, it was hard not to be impressed by the boundless creativity of Montreal troupe Tentacle Tribe’s Prism. The work plays endlessly and inventively with several movable large-scale mirrors, limbs and bodies repeating themselves in reflections to dreamlike effect.
Sometimes they pull off brain-breaking illusions—reaching out from corners, bodies appear to float midair and sprout new heads and limbs. Arms bending down from the top of the mirrors repeat like a series of arches.
Set to a soundtrack that mixes machine clicks and electro-orchestral sequences, Prism plays the mechanical off the fluid and organic. With each member dressed in a different prismatic colour, the group at moments looks like an elaborate machine, arms pumping and popping like pistons and gears. Other times, they’re as fluid as the morphing blobs of a lava lamp: there is one stunningly innovative duet between Marie-Reine “MQueen” Kabasha in bright red and Rahime “NOSB” Gay-Labbé in orange, passing through portals crafted out of their own limbs, like an ever-moving infinity knot. Dancers seem to appear from and disappear into the black void.
After sculptural pairings and group work, the highlight comes when the troupe taps the energy of a hip-hop battle, celebrating the individual in an explosive series of solo floor spins and popping work in front of their house of mirrors. And so the piece, including a bit of spoken poetry, also seems to have something to say about its prism metaphor—the multifaceted nature of identity and inner versus outer reflection. But we’re here to say it also just looks damn cool.
And over at the Vancouver Playhouse last night, from the opening moments of Social Tango, Vancouver audiences knew they were going to be in for an atmospheric experience.
Black-and-white film of faded Belle Epoque Buenos Aires danced across a scrim. Behind it, a crazy-talented quintet of Argentinian musicians—bandoneon player Nicolás Enrich, pianist Fulvio Giraudo, violinist Humberto Ridolfi, double bassist Cristian Basto, and singer-guitarist Ariel Varnerin—played the seductive, but somehow also sorrowful, syncopated rhythms of the tango. (The silhouette of an uninvited mouse scampering along the front of the cityscape came courtesy of Vancouver, prompting laughter from the local audience—and no doubt confusion from the visiting band.)
What followed felt like a journey into an authentic, straight-outta-San Telmo milonga—the tango gatherings where people of all ages come to dance. Small cabaret tables sat at the side of the stage, the swirl of crack tango dancers occasionally taking a break to fan themselves or chatter there. The visiting Argentinian troupe, led by Agustina Videla, is not just here to show how endlessly intricate the dance form can be, but to share the authentic soul of an art form that continues to attract devotees in the Argentinian capital and around the world. Videla uses a loose narrative of a businesswoman drawn to the dance hall and finally working up the nerve to learn—and ace—the tango.
The speed and nuance of the show’s choreography is stunning to anyone even vaguely acquainted with the form. Faces and torsos press suggestively close; legs scissor so fast they become a blur; feet occasionally kick out high behind a billowing skirt, or stretch out for a long, tantalizingly low lunge. And it’s impossible not to notice the importance of the footwear: the fetishized heels grinding, tapping, and sliding across the floor, the men’s shoes—leaf-green, two-tone, patent black—shined to a high gloss.
It’s a gorgeous journey, floral dresses and linen-topped tables set against the grey-tone images of one of the world’s most atmospheric cities, the near-mystical bandoneon wheezing, cascading, and punctuating the movement at every turn. The most affecting moment comes near the end, with black-and-white footage of interviews with some of Buenos Aires’s older tango faithful—talking about the way the milongas offer an escape from solitude and give them a reason to live.
Afterward, local tango fans packed the Playhouse salon for an after-show milonga, dancing well into the night, no doubt channeling the undiluted Buenos Aires energy that emanated off the stage. 
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