Red. Her skirt’s hem sighs and comes out of the stage darkness at times. Her ankle, her hips, her lips: a unique, restrained breath. All the music she has danced is concentrated in those few steps, in balance between focus and out of focus, while Evaristo Carriego dies again. It’s a matter of seconds, just before the freeze-frame: her eyes look up suddenly, and stare. Straight beyond: the stage, the lens, the monitor. Beyond everything. And cast Mariachiara out of the dark.

The first tango in my life was Carlos Carlsen’s Sarabasa, played by the Cuarteto Cedròn. Then, it came A Evaristo Carriego.

Venice 1987: she was tour operator and window-dresser, yet unhappy, since something was missing.  

I recorded myself a cassette: the same tango over and over again, on both sides. I listened to it all the time: going about town, before spleeping. I identified myself with it completely. One day i said: that’s enough. I look myself in the mirror and make up my mind: i rent out my flat and leave for Buenos Aires with my wintertime luggage. It should have been for three months; I stayed one year long. Including summertime, despite my woolen clothes. I only came back for Christmas in order to close down my house. Then i took the plane again towards my new life.

Another step in the Mariachiara Michieli’s story: under the Buenos Aires’ messy sky, in the morning light.

I had a balcony which was just one meter long, and still was bigger than the entire flat. I lived the most romantic period in my life,  between the tango and myself: i was estremamente poor, but i felt also extremely valiente. I was a strange kind of pet: those days in Argentina they were not in the habit to see an european girl who dared to come alone and study the tango seriously.

Remembering her Maestros, her glance softens. Another look beyond.

I used to take lessons from Antonio Todaro in the morning, around ten. Antonio cared about my dance: You must protect your feet, he used to say. He introduced me to Pepito…

His eyebrows always on the look-out, ready to tell any shade in his heart, stuck in a round face. He was a small man, Pepito Avellaneda. But he had wings on his heels:

When i met him for the first time, i talked openly. I just said three things: i am a foreigner, but i want to learn; i want to live here; i am broke. Pepito became like a wonderful daddy for me: he had all the flaws of a kind soul. I went to his lessons right after Antonio’s classes.  

At midafternoon, a tour in the pastry shop for the facturas: a tender and crispy package that Mariachiara brings to the milonga where Miguel Balmaceda lives.

My first Maestro, who taught me the dance’s density. For nine months i did nothing but the basic steps: he used to drive out the pupils who danced without aplomb. Miguel started his lesson at six. At nine there was the group practice: a slice of pizza, and then we danced till four, till five, …six in the morning. Once at home i cried my true tears. However i was up again at 10.

A new dawn is breaking, in Buenos Aires.

It was like they gave birth to me for a second time: i have always been a violent, rebel girl. In the Tango, i found serenity and sweetness. And i was feeling free inside this new world of mine: i had never felt such sense of injustice and such happiness in the same time before. I finally understood what hurt me the most: the violence of not having a living relationship with the reality around me.

Because Poetry was going barefoot in Buenos Aires those days. And when it stopped, there was always a surprise:

At Canning, a wonderful music reached you since the pathway. Then you got in and could see all those old men, eighty years old people, embracing each other. And dancing. In that moment you could realize that life is far beyond anything you have been told before. That romance, that wealth of sentiments, were patent and strong as a slap in the face. At that time, there were not a lot of tourists: we forced the Argentinians to sell off; and the Tango ain’t no more what it always used to be for them: something beautiful to live. Once, there was the knowledge, there was someone who ruled the game. Any creative wave was canalized by the old masters. You were taught how to behave well in a milonga, how to be a tanguero, how to think and live like a tanguero. A sign, a short sentence. The old man just said something like No, nene. And it was enough. It was not a matter of education, it was not an order. At that time they enabled you to get them sincerely, and see the romance that shone through.

Another flash from Canning and its rites, in the embraces’ suspended era.

To me, the Tango is mostly tenderness, not sensuality: it’s the complicity that two people can have in spite of all they are in their everyday life.

Buenos Aires smiles with a bitter line:

We europeans forced the Argentinians to teach more and more, and more differently too. In Europe everybody has the same requirements of a professional dancer, but the mentality, the body, the muscles and the training.

The sparkles of the all the packed theatres she has played with Alejandro Aquino and the Compañia Tangueros, pass in Mariachiara’s eyes: New York, London, Paris. A suite of stages and success. Until the last choreography as leading dancer, the eleventh of August in 1996: A Evaristo Carriego once again. Another step in the misterious game of coincidence, which is so typical of the tango: in every end, a new start. Her skirt’s hem is waving again: maybe Mariachiara is going out of the screen. Or, maybe, she’s getting into a new story. Her glance is certainly looking beyond.

The Tango is a choreographic language, but is also an artistic expression that goes further its same history: it is a huge popular songbook made of music and dance.

Mariachiara’s goal is clear:

I work in the tradition of what consider the true Tango, but i don’t forget the times i’m living in. The Tango has been created by a large mass of people: that’s not a reason to play it down. On the contrary, we have to value the Tango like every other dance; it is a complete art which finds its truth in the body, although they lessen it. Perhaps the tango is a lost cause: therefore, one of the few worth a fight. Or, according to Jean Cocteau, the tango is just an overnight wonder; which will last forever.

Michela Fregona, 2001