Gotan Project bring Paris to the south

Last night, the French group Gotan Project played at Hamer Hall, in the Victorian Arts Centre. It seemed a very popular concert with most seats filled and an enthusiastic audience that had no trouble standing up at the end for an ovation.

The players dressed in white suits with a black backdrop on which was projected video images form their clips. As music, it wasn't particularly to my taste. It was very mediated and the live instruments did not seem to blend well with the recorded music.

The beat was mostly a regular techno rhythm. While easy to dance to, it had none of the subtlety and variation of a tango like Piazzola.

There was much linking Paris and Buenos Aires in the show. I couldn't help thinking that the music appeals partly because of this southern romance, that a city at the bottom of the world might be glamorised by the professional music machine of the north. The white suits, the sophisticated technology -- somehow it didn't measure up to the humanism of the south.

Gotan and Edna

From Misty's, a Melbourne-Tango combination: Edna Everage and Gotan Project.

Brunswick tango

Like most inner suburbs of Melbourne, Brunswick is embroidered with lanes and cul de sacs. While Sydney Road is a relentless flow of noisy metal, the lanes that spring from it can foster quite particular milieus.

I walk through this lane twice a day. It doesn't seem to have a name. It takes me past the back of a glazier and Greek cake shop. I see evidence of damage that has been occurring to premises around Brunswick, needing replacement. And I am struck by a heady cloud of vanilla as I pass by the confectioners. Quite often, there is business going on here, as strange men do backyard deals.

Then I encounter the Baptist Church. At night, there is usually a Tai Kwon Do lesson going on inside, with half a dozen men in cotton jackets striking severe poses. Around the corner, there's a light that goes on automatically as you pass. It spotlights a corner that must be a favourite spot for relief. Sometimes, there's a strange package there with what look like electrical tools. This is one of the very few vantage spots just off Sydney Road where someone can conceal themselves.

Then it's on to the road itself, to join the normal flow of people and cars.

Is it a tango? Well, there's no dance, nor hint of romance. But it does feel like a trick played against the street, or at least the space where this might happen.

The intensity of tango seems so remote from a liveable city like Melbourne, it's appearance might seem to be left to the strange dank corners of the city.

Tango fences

Taking the Tango to a spatial image…the dance is a person-to-person confrontation; the union of unresolvable opposites, the division of existence into life and death. I immediately think of spatial boundaries and the spatial figures they produce. And in Melbourne, the ubiquitous version of such a boundary is that between neighbours. Its physical form is the paling fence.

The suburban paling fence is at once - like all boundaries - a separation of space and promise of a contact. In mediation, some 80% of disputes involve the paling fence - its actual location, height, shared costs and so on. It is a built line of confrontation, sometimes of a bitter nature. The fence can also be used as a plane where friendliness and cooperation can occur. This can take place over the top of the fence, at its ends, holes and sometimes even through gates. The fence can be a spatial sweetener.

I can envisage some models and drawings of Tango Fences; maybe an installation in a place which would highlight its strange adaptation (to the Tango) or even a kit of parts (or set of actions/manoeuvres) that could turn any existing fence into its Tango Other. To do this I would need to know the Tango moves in actuality, so that the foot sweeps, stops, knee movements and so on, could be translated to fence-making.

Given the knife fight origins of the dance, it occurs to me as I write this that "fencing" is a perfect word for the associations of this translation.

Alex Selenitsch
25th Oct 06

A Melbourne tango?

Though born in Buenos Aires, tango stays alive as a form thanks to its 'rediscovery' abroad. It first took shape as an identifiable genre once it appeared in the night clubs of Paris. Astor Piazzolla brought his experience of the New York jazz scene to Neuvo Tango. Tango has been given new energy from its incarnations in Japan and Finland.

There is one manifestation of tango that is produced for tourists, where men in white scarves dance with women in slit skirts and fishnet stockings. But tango has a rich history that defies any one simple form.

You can think of tango as a
- musical rhythm
- a proud way of holding oneself
- a sceptical attitude
- a means to impress

Melbourne Tango is an opportunity to explore the dimensions of tango, and find something that might fit onto the city perhaps a little more like Buenos Aires than many other cities. It is hoped that this might reveal aspects of life in Melbourne that are otherwise concealed. In particular, it might reveal other sides to Melbourne than the cheerful image of a 'liveable' city -- something in Melbourne that touches other emotions, that fit this world a little less, and are searching for something more.