River North Dance Chicago

The milongas are those places where the tango is danced socially. It’s a point of encounter where friends – known, current, old, and future — come together.  These people who coincide in their taste and passion for the tango intertwine in an embrace that could seem sexually charged to those who don’t frequent this environment, but no … it’s just another one of those magical ingredients of the tango.  After embracing a woman for 12 minutes, the man accompanies her to her table after having shared the sensation of floating on the dance floor.

But Al Sur Del Sur travels further back and reveals these characters in the moments just before the milonga; it reveals that each of them undergoes different moments – pain, passion, fear, secrets and joys.  It reveals that often people must hide their feelings in order to fit into the commonality of individuals, to fit into that obstinate effort of all human beings to achieve equality.

And so that I show the dance begins…wary, and it will continue with that strange mix of euphoria and melancholy.  And it will end as if a fistful of sugar were scattered slowly into the wind.  Outside life awaits them to begin a new day.  –Choreographer Ruben Veliz