Festival de Marseille

MICHIELI, SACRE' COUP DE JEUNE SUR LE TANGO
Le Festival de Marseille a fini en beauté en offrant pendant deux soirs un spectacle fidèle à l’esprit de cette danse sud-amèricaine tout en la modernisant avec esprit.

Le Festival de Marseille rebondit toujours là où on ne l’attend pas. Illustration avec le spectacle de tango, l’un des rendez-vous dèsormais traditionnel de la Cour de la Vieille Charité. Traditionnel, avez-vous dit? C’était sans compter sur le tempérament de Mariachiara Michieli et sa rencontre avec Carel Kraayenhof. La première, découverte aux saluts dans toute sa beauté radieuse, est une choréographe italienne, née a Venise voici 37 ans, mais qui a épousé la cause du tango depuis 1987 en séjournant longuement à Buenos Aires avant de revenir porter la bonne parole en Europe depuis dix ans. Le second est un virtuose du bandoneòn, ce cousin de l’accordéon. En 1988, en Hollande, il cofonde le Sexteto Canyengue, tout premier sextet de tango en Europe. Dix ans après, en 1998, c’est la rencontre avec la Nueva Compania Tangueros que dirige Mariachiara. Depuis, le second accompagne l’autre sur scène. Le resultat? Une bouffée de fraicheur étourdissante, un formidable voyage au pays du tango, servi dans toute sa noblesse par des interprètes excellents mais revisité sous le sceau du contemporain intelligent. Le public ne s’y est pas trompé qui, deux soirs durant, a réservé un triomphe à ces Cuatro Noches où les codes du genre se retrouvent tout en étant détournés au profit d’un regard moins conventionnel, libéré. Buste en avant et cheveux gominés d’un coté, robes rouges fendues et talons aiguilles de l’autre, tout le tango est là, mais dans une souplesse infinie, hanches désaxées, jambes haut jetées, comme désarticulées. Pas de deux ou ensemble évitent la monotonie d’echaînements standardisés en jouant la carte du décalage avec une pincée d’humour. L’orchestre est de la partie avec sa partition saccadée, s’offrant même des incursions dans le répertoire classique. Après l’entracte, en début de deuxième partie, le coup de grâce de l’enchantement sera donné avec cette approche contemporaine inspirée, les danseurs évoluant en chaussons! Un cadeau inoubliable.

Patrik Merle – La Provence

Teatro Comunale of Belluno

DANCING THE TANGO TO THE HEART'S BEAT
Packed theatre and standing ovation for Tangueros Cuatro Noches

To the heart's beat. Free from the stage-set, essential in the costumes, light-years far from the easy autobiography, the Tango of Mariachiara Michieli and Marco Castellani's Tangueros Cuatro Noches, picks out the hardest way: the elegance. The music is the powerful and impalpable only scenery that the choreography allows itself to. In order to spread emotion, it lets the bodies and the melodies speak directly for themselves, like an everlasting metaphor of life. Percussive, deep and enthralling, the Sexteto Canyengue's six musicians rule over the stage and prepare the ground to the four ideal night-clubs in which the four Tango nights are set. The dictatorship is just round the corner; the bodies meet and leave, numberless lives of men and women are told by a step, a glance, a clasping of hands. So Tangueros turns into a precision clockwork. With a throbbing heart inside. The choreographic language is extraordinary, the old romantic Tango is melting with the new impulses, without giving itself away. The emotion speaks with the voice of style and neatness, the magic blocks the audience in an out-of-time atmosphere; till the over claimed encore which delivers one last thrill, sheathed in red velvet.

Michela Fregona - Il Gazzettino

Auditorium S. Domenico of Foligno
Teatro Comunale of Gubbio

FOUR UNFORGETTABLE NIGHTS WITH THE TANGO ARGENTINO
Never ending cheers for NCT at the Ballet Festival in Gubbio and in Foligno. 

But the lack of frills is impressive. Mostly because it is flying among the steps a certain air of freedom, a certain inner energy that looks definitely ahead, even if it is strongly rooted in the tradition. In the third part, the barefoot dance is very exciting, free at last from the stiletto-heels constrictions. It is the eternal, and daring, Tango of course; however it seems to pursue the fusion with Modern Dance, and  find another facet of itself instead. This is the real event of the night. Because here lives and operates the margin of intelligence, good taste and technique, a real dance mastery, accurate and severe. And that blooming of volée, those junctions in three, that slight fading of crossings and shading between two women and one man, besides reminding some precious moments in the Modern Dance history (such as Nijinsky's "Jeux", for example), also refer to the exact light and to the formal clarity of one of the greatest contemporary Masters: Billy Forsythe, who is the choreographer Ms.Michieli is hinting at as ideal point of reference in her journey into the new.

Ermanno Romanelli - Corriere dell'Umbria

Teatro Regio of Parma, summer season

THE MOST ELEGANT TANGO 

It is the most elegant and sophisticated in the world, the Tango that Nueva Compania Tangueros brought to Parma after four years at Teatro Regio's summer festival. The new Tangueros of today consists of five couples of young dancers from Buenos Aires, but the Company's spirit did not change; if anything, it seems to be even more sophisticated in its concept, in its way to dance the Tango. There is no trace of the kitschy folklore that is quite typical of many Argentine shows: there is just dance in here, plain style, elegance and beauty, and the conquered audience replies with endless cheers.

Valentina Bonelli - Gazzetta di Parma

Teatro Ciak of Milano, and tour

SHAKESPEARE IN TANGO

Since 1992, Tangueros has changed a lot, but not in the will to measure oneself with the deepest nature of Tango, which actually provides the Company with a style even more incisive and elegant than ever. Mariachiara Michieli’s latest and very sophisticated creation proves all that. Her extraordinary troupe of dancers (Sabrina and Ruben Veliz among them) and the superb Sexteto Canyengue melt wonderfully together. We are anxiously waiting to see what Mariachiara will do with Shakespeare and Tango in her next show, which will probably debut in the 2002, for the Tangueros 10th anniversary.

Francesca Pedroni – Danza & Danza