BWW Reviews: Duo Demonstrates the Art of the Tango at the Dardo Galletto Studios

At least in the American imagination, no form of dance has the same sex appeal as the tango. Just try slotting a few other dance names into Last Tango in Paris (Last Charleston in Paris? Last Quadrille in Paris?) and you'll get a decent idea of what I mean. Even if you've never been to a tango performance, you have probably seen pop culture testaments to the dance's image of passion and sophistication (Scent of a Woman) or send-ups of that image (Some Like It Hot). But if you were at the Dardo Galletto Studios recently, you saw something very different: the tango as a form of calculated, concentrated artistry.

For the past couple of weeks, renowned Argentine tangoists Gabriel Missé and Analía Centurión have been performing nighttime dance sets (and offering tango lessons) at the Studios. Though designed as displays of technical prowess, these performances aren't dry or academic; rather, they're part of the larger festive atmosphere that reigns on any given evening. Take the elevator to the 11th-floor Dardo Galletto dance hall around 10:00 or 11:00, and you'll discover an appreciative, easygoing assembly of professional dancers, enthusiastic novices, and dance enthusiasts. Stick around for an exhibition by Missé and Centurión, and you'll see a tango that uses bracing, staccato footwork-not heady sexuality-to hold your attention.

Festivities first. Guests to the Dardo Galletto Studios were treated to sangria, light snacks, and an air of pleasant informality. (Remember those dun-colored metal folding chairs they used at your grammar school assemblies? At the Dardo Galletto Studios, you either sit in those or remain standing.) And each Missé and Centurión performance was prefaced by an open-to-the-public session of the milonga-originally "a fast, sensual, and disreputable Argentine dance." The Dardo Galletto version was considerably toned-down.

These milonga sessions mixed amateurs, semi-professionals, and everyone in between-which only added to the charm. For each man on the floor with the style and steps of a milonga adept, there was another man moving his partner from place to place with the bland determination of a college sophomore moving a piece of dorm furniture. If there was a quiet comedy to some of the less inspired dancers, there was something quietly heartening about seeing amateurs and virtuosos side-by-side. In a few cases, milonga veterans showed newcomers to the Dardo Galletto Studios the rudiments of the dance. Plenty of festivities, and a touch of education.

Missé and Centurión didn't take the floor for an hour, maybe two. The wait was worth it, and not just because that wait involved complimentary wine and an arresting 11^th-floor view. Though Missé and Centurión sometimes sent themselves spinning from one end of the Dardo Galletto floor to the other, their dancing relies little on obvious flourishes. Not much in the way of long-struck poses here. Instead, viewers had the thrill of watching Missé fire his legs across the floor (and, sometimes, straight between Centurión's feet) at high velocity.

And in a pleasantly surprising move, Missé and Centurión showed how well-suited their style is to a very different kind of music: old school rock-and-roll. Watching them dance to "Blue Suede Shoes" was a treat, but it was also (by a fascinating reverse logic) a fine demonstration what makes them so eminently watchable as tangoists. When I first saw Missé perform the tango, I found his dancing precise and a little bullish. I didn't realize, until I saw his take on "Blue Suede Shoes", that so much of his dancing has moments of jauntiness and playfulness. Missé has plenty of personality; where his tango is concerned, amping up the sex and seductiveness in the name of "personality" is just unnecessary.

Of course, this isn't to say that a sexually-charged tango is automatically a dumbed-down tango. In fact, intellectually-rigorous works of modern dance-such as Kate Weare's Drop Down (2006)-delve into sexual intimacy by borrowing plenty of tango moves. Missé and Centurión don't, and can't, really delve into a theme, yet they exhibit the kind of technical polish that surely has a lot of intelligence and a lot of passion somewhere at its core. Professionalism like this is sexy in its own way.

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