Inhabiting the Silence (2023)
Director: Juliet McMains | Featuring: Ricardo Andrés Baigorria Lighting: Fabio Roppi (Teatro el Fino) | 5m 29s
This portrait of tango and malambo dancer Ricardo Andrés Baigorria (director of the company Nada Más que Malambo) deconstructs traditional malambo rhythms, using fragments that might be discarded in traditional staging of a folklore show as the basis for a fertile exploration of a contemporary reimagining of folklore. Although this portrait features malambo dancing (which is of course not tango), I include it in the series for several reasons: (1) Ricardo makes his primary income performing and teaching tango. (2) In the past, male stage tango dancers were often recruited from the world of folklore, leading to its strong influence in development of stage tango. (3) Malambo footwork is often danced socially at milongas when chacareras are played. (4) Like tango dancers, folklore dancers are so often expected to reproduce stereotypes and images of a mythologized past that they have difficulty finding audiences and funding for their contemporary choreographies.