A story of style

6:03pm Thursday 2nd October 2008

The seed of inspiration for Tango! Tango! came about when cellist and writer Justin Pearson played music by Ástor Piazzolla in a band at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

A woman approached him to commend him on his performance, and gave him some sheet music that her father had written.

Other projects then took Mr Pearson’s attention, and it was more than a year before he took a proper look at the music. When he did, he recognised the name of the composer — Jose Bragato, the cellist who worked for Piazzolla and arranged all his music for 30 years.

Mr Pearson immediately contacted Bragato’s daughter, only to find he had died six months earlier.

“I felt a weight of guilt on my shoulders,” Mr Pearson says. “So when I was asked to develop a new show, I decided to take tango as my subject.”

Mr Pearson wrote the show drawing on Piazzolla’s writings about his life. He says: “In so many tango shows people take a predictable route, telling the story of tango first arriving in Buenos Aires. I wanted to take a different approach, to tell it through the eyes of the man who broke the mould of old tango.”

Piazzolla revolutionised traditional tango into a new style known as tango nuevo, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music.

There was such heated controversy around his style in the late Thirties and Forties that he was physically assaulted outside the clubs where he was performing — though there are also stories of him thumping audience members who insulted him.

Mr Pearson says: “In Argentina, tango was like a religion. At the end of his concerts there were often fights, because people didn’t like the way he played tango just to be listened to, not danced to.”

The show follows Piazzolla’s early life in New York, where his family had moved from Argentina, and where he was expelled from three schools before the age of seven for violent behaviour. It recounts his return to Argentina in his teens, and the development of his own tango style, up to his old age.

Dancing styles in the show range from traditional golden-era tango and milonga, the dance from which tango originated, to tango-inspired choreography danced to the music of Piazzolla, and improvised dances. The show’s two dancers, Richard Manuel and Pauline Riebell, both trained in Argentina.

“This is not Strictly Ballroom. It’s not a flash, bang, wallop tango show,” Mr Pearson says. “Tango is about a relationship between two people, and how they interact.”

Tango! Tango! is on at The Radlett Centre, in Aldenham Avenue, Radlett, on October 12, at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £16 (concessions £15) and are available from the box office on 01923 859291.

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