TANGO INTERVIEWS
Sebastian ARCE and Mariana MONTES (2004)

 

 

 

Can you tell me which were the main changes in your Tango since you started dancing together ?

Well, since we started dancing together, I can tell you that we tried all the styles and things ever performed in Tango and even more ! We never stop changing things and this sometimes drives Mariana crazy, but ... hehehe ! Tango is a never ending quest and it'ss even worse if you consider Tango as an art and not as a hobby ! For our part, Tango is obviously our job, but we also consider it as an art with very deep spiritual connexions.

For a very long time, we have been fooled by the Tango on Stage that kept us away from the improvisation part of Tango and made us somewhat a bit "distant" in our dance. When I met Mariana, I had already very much worked on stage, way too much !!! Mariana was also a product of the Stage but she was coming from the Argentine Folklore. So when we started dancing together, the Stage was a natural for us. Working on stage brings advantages and drawbacks. On a positive stand, we learned what a regular work meant, we learned to sweat and to make progress through our work, we learned to be very demanding with ourselves to earn our place on a stage. On a negative side, we worked too early to take time to know ourselves as well as eachother body and artistical sensitivity, which affected our artistical search as a couple... as we didn't have any established personality and as we didn't know ourselves enough in our dance, it made us harder to find OUR personality, and we are still a working progress about it ... but we shouldn't be that far now.