2006, ORGANIC LIFE, BLACK TANGO

BERGAMOT GROUP

ORGANIC LIFE. BLACK TANGO

Video performance
2006

2`32``

The video performance Black Tango was realized on the shore of the Baltic Sea. We recreated the pose of the famous monumental sculpture of 1937 "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman" in Moscow, a symbol of the Soviet era. Interaction with nature - the wind, the waves, the unsteadiness of the sand underfoot - became part of the choreography. We lost our balance, fell, rose, and this, together with the dynamic, intermittent editing of the video, was the fundamental method - through vulnerability and imperfection of the body to destroy the illusion of motionless, monumental stability.
Here we also work with the aesthetics of tango as a cultural phenomenon. Initially, it was an exclusively male dance, then it became a pair dance, with a rigidly fixed role model: the man leads, the woman obeys.
In the 50s in Argentina, its homeland, tango was banned by the military dictatorship as too free, dangerous a practice. Like our improvisation with monumental sculpture, tango here becomes a way not to submit to the power of form, but to rethink it.