El tango es mi vida: the stars of the hit Tango X 2 have returned to tour the U.S. this fall - Milena Plebs and Miguel Angel Zotto

Dance Magazine, Nov, 1997 by Marilyn Hunt

Tango fever is sweeping the world. In the United States, especially since the show Tango Argentino visited in 1985, the number of stage presentations as well as the ranks of tango enthusiasts have been swelling [see Teacher Talk]. Newsletters detail tango events from all over. In Argentina, where the tango rose from popular roots to become a national passion and then fell on hard times during the pop-dominated sixties and seventies, the dance has had a dramatic resurgence.

Contributing to that resurgence with its special eloquence and taste has been Milena Plebs and Miguel Angel Zotto's Tango X 2, which took over Manhattan's City Center last fall and garnered dream reviews, sold-out audiences, and standing ovations. (For worldwide tours it is called Tango Para Dos or Perfumes de Tango.) During intermissions, elegant American and Argentinean cognoscenti and casual theatergoers alike could be seen in animated discussion, sketching out moves.

The return of Plebs and Zotto this fall for a coast-to-coast U.S. tour, from Los Angeles in September to City Center in November, features their yet-grander-scaled Una Noche de Tango, originally commissioned by the prestigious Lyon Biennale de la Danse.

In 1991 the pair became the first tango dancers to win the highest prize for all dance in Argentina, the Prima Maria Ruanova. At about the same time they choreographed Houston Opera Theatre's tango opera, Maria de Buenos Aires, in which Zotto also played one of the roles.

Tango seems very up-to-date; this passionate dialogue of bodies with its frank but stylized eroticism, its virtuosity, and its spice of physical and emotional danger is a challenge to dance and a pleasure to watch. For a woman to follow a man's lead no longer seems politically incorrect but an art in itself. And the action and reaction, the thrust and counterthrust of the tango, afford the woman her own responses.

No question, the tango has sprung loose from the glitzy cliche image frozen in international competition dancing and Hollywood films: haughty, rigid poses, snaps of the head, and exaggerated slinking. Instead, as danced by masters to authentic, haunting music of sophisticated rhythms and textures, tango reveals itself as a wonderfully supple instrument of expression.

For example, at one extreme of Plebs and Zotto's versatile talents, their first dance on last season's Tango X 2 program featured their lightning, switchblade legs that interweave even as they duel. The footwork was precise, no matter how fast. The two were like equal poles generating an electric current between them. Above the maelstrom of legs floated their upper bodies in close embrace, Zotto's right hand extended across Plebs's back to rest under her right arm. Their concentrated gaze focused inward, downward, until suddenly at the end of the dance, the embrace opened like a flower, releasing their energy outward to the audience. The spectators reciprocated with their own vociferous flood of emotion.

In another facet of Zotto and Plebs's personae, they danced a slow and--yes--smoldering, but supremely elegant tango, in which Plebs slowly rubbed her leg down Zotto's. This woman was no victim, but an equal partner expressing her own desires. Their every glide, tap, and caress of the floor seemed to whisper secrets. Each step that penetrated the partner's space intimated the intimate, while nose to nose they gazed into each other's eyes. Nothing happened that you couldn't take a child to watch--nothing, and everything. The ultimate in movement as metaphor, re-created afresh.

During their New York City season, Plebs and Zotto sat down long enough to talk. Who are these mysterious figures of the night? Relaxing offstage by daylight, their hair no longer smoothed to an art deco shine, they become young people whose softened features make them look even younger than their thirty-some years. Their passion for the tango animates their faces, and their joy in their heady New York success spills out in infectious laughter. The history of their onstage romance is bound up with their offstage one. It's a good story.

Miguel Angel Zotto began dancing in Buenos Aires in the comparsas, or street dances, that his family regularly organized during Carnival. He also, like other Argentineans of his generation, danced to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. But he knew tango music from his family and liked to sing it, and at seventeen he visited a tango club, became fascinated with the dancing, and began learning it from family and friends. (Later, he and Plebs studied with such greats as Juan Carlos Copes of Tango Argentino fame.) While working as a mason, Zotto recounts, "when we would stop for lunch, we would practice the tango. We were crazy for the tango." He became a regular at the clubs.

There he was seen by Argentinean modern dance choreographer Anna Maria Steckelmann. She persuaded him to teach her to tango, and eventually they choreographed a show for the two of them called Jazmines ("Jasmines"), which they presented at Michelangelo, a sophisticated supper-theater in Buenos Aires's principal tango district.