Ballroom and art meet in “Al Sur del Sur,” a new dance starring and about the tango, set to get its premiere this weekend from River North Dance Chicago.
“I’ve always loved the tango and been fascinated by it,” Frank Chaves, River North’s artistic director, said during rehearsals at the Ruth Page Center for the Performing Arts. “But I wanted to keep this as authentic as possible, and, for our dancers, it has been a big shift. They’ve had to learn a whole new technique.”
Chaves invited Sabrina and Ruben Veliz, Argentine tango experts who’ve toured the world performing since 1997, to come and fashion the choreography. In crafting “Al Sur,” they faced a complex challenge: delivering the soul and sizzle of tango with dancers whose expertise is modern dance, not ballroom.
“In tango, the partners are locked in an embrace almost all the time, so they have to work constantly as a team,” Sabrina said during a break. “You share the energy. You share movement,” which includes the trickiest of footwork for the women in heels. “If you don’t, it doesn’t work.”
While a number of touring revues starring celebrated Argentine tango couples have played here over the years, she and her husband are striving to blend the artistry of repertory dance and classic tango into an artistic hybrid. The five movements for 12 dancers include an exhilarating waltz, a saucy quartet with subdued hints of hanky-panky and a mournful partnership of two women — not romantic but an elegy of sisterly or mother-daughter consolation.
The premiere is scheduled as one of various works on River North’s Valentine’s weekend program Friday through Sunday at the Harris Theater.
The title, by the way, means “south of the south” and refers to tango’s underlying depth — a dynamic well beyond partnership pizazz. “The south is the bottom of our country, and we mean that we want to get to the southernmost part of a person, to that which is most profound,” Sabrina explained.
River North Dance Chicago
When: 8 p.m. Friday
and Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Harris Theater,
205 E. Randolph Drive
Tickets: $30-$65; 312-334-7777 or harristheaterchicago.org
