The refined taste for the visual-scenic aspects of the shows, the combination of irony with a light dramaturgical breath, a mood over which the sensuality of the Tango tradition hovers. These are some of the key aspects of the style of Nucleodanza, a historic Argentine company founded in 1974 in Buenos Aires by Margarita Bali and Susana Tambutti. A degree in biology and a second artistic life as a sculptor for Bali, an architecture degree for Tambutti demonstrate the multifaceted interests of the two choreographers. Both danced with Oscar Araiz's famous Argentine company, later signing some 40 titles for Nucleodanza between them. Among their successes is the choreography for the film 'Tangos, El Esilio de Gardel' (1985), which won a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Margarita Bali's works are distinguished by the care with which the choreography is set in scenic spaces with intriguing and pictorial details, frequently enriched by video projections. In "Dos en la cornista", the dance of the male couple of the two protagonists is doubled, even tripled by the images narrated on the big screen that see the two dancers dancing between walls and balustrades in a game of unity and diversification that continues between video choreography and live sequences. In "Dobiar mujer por linea de puntos", also by Bali, it is instead two everyday objects such as a small table and a chair, distorted by a surreal design, that become the base for Gabriela Prodo's deductive and meditative dance. This scenographic awareness is also repeated in "Tilt", a solo conceived by Bali and co-created with Ines Sanguinetti. Interpreted at the Festival by Anamaria Garat, "Tilt" is a picture of ordinary life told with the distance of a choreography about the transformation of everyday objects into something else. The blue curtain hanging on the wall thus becomes the dancer's dress, enveloping her during the slow twists that sell the protagonist crawling on the pink wall, where an empty frame hangs. Placed around the body, it too becomes "dress", suggesting to the performer new ways of living the "normality" of a life spent within domestic walls, allowing herself to be captured by the different atmospheres aroused by a score that combines John Lurie with the theme of "La Cumparsita".
The other two pieces on the programme at Oriente Occidente are by Susana Tambutti, author among others of one of the company's most ironic and transformist works, 'La Punalada'. At the Festival she presents 'Como un pulpo', a piece with a lucid technical-dramatic development. A man and a woman walk around a large rectangular table to "Reactionary Tango" by Carlo Blay. Their journeys continue diametrically opposed: the two ignore each other. As the piece progresses, the two get closer, until they find themselves dancing an aggressive couple dance together, in which the tradition of the tango emerges frayed and angry. Brand new is 'Muerte annunciada la guion': a trio involving two dancers and an actor. Reviewed with humour the different approaches to death in the great academic tradition, from the natural end of 'Death of the Swan' to the fatal love pains of 'Giselle' and the sacrificed rites of 'The Rite of Spring'.
