WARM-UP
Movers
Tango Soul: Performing in a pandemic by leah borts-kuperman
Tatiana Lerebours: An interrupted apprenticeship
the chemistry between faye and Bryant Lopez, award-winning Argentine tango dancers, is palpable even through a screen. Their sharp, intense movements slice through the small performance space when they suddenly freeze – then disappear. The audience is left on edge. When the livestreamed Facebook performance starts back up again, the pair is rotated ninety degrees. >>
“It’s like Fred Astaire dancing on the wall,” one audience member typed in the comments. Another commenter said they were willing to turn their computer on its side to watch Faye dance in a stunning royal blue gown and Bryant in a tidy suit that would surely impress Astaire. If he had a Facebook account, that is.
Faye says that while the couple is teaching and performing online since the COVID-19 outbreak, they’ve experienced a lot of technical issues like this one. “That’s been stressful for the teachers,” Faye says of the technologies that may be great for conference calls but less so for tango. “On the other hand, we’ve noticed our students are making a lot of progress, even more sometimes than in a regular group setting because, somehow with the cameras on them, they feel like we’re watching them all the time,” she says. They own and direct the Toronto-based Tango Soul Argentine Tango Academy.
The couple, whose style derives from the milongas of Buenos Aires, has also danced around the world. They have danced with Cirque du Soleil, in Take the Lead with Antonio Banderas and in The Tuxedo with Jackie Chan, but they now find themselves mostly isolated in a one-bedroom apartment near Sunnybrook Park in Toronto.
Livestreamed performances and video classes are some of the ways they continue to support their business through the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic. Faye says the shift was devastating at first; they would have performed for the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards in Ottawa this spring, and then at another performance in Montréal. But this isn’t the first time the couple has coped with uncertainty.
Bryant recalls the 2002-04 SARS outbreak in Toronto: “We were in a [crisis] ourselves, but nobody else knew it because people didn’t want to go take dance lessons and touch,” Bryant says, noting how much the business struggled. “Back then, there was no technology to support it, and it didn’t hit everybody. Now, it’s hit everybody and we’re all in the same situation.”
Luckily, the Lopezes are used to working together in isolation. By the time they gave a virtual performance in late April, funded by the National Arts Centre’s #CanadaPerforms relief fund, it was impossible to tell the couple was juggling choreography, cameras, costumes, lights, makeup and music – all while praying their twoand-a-half-year-old would agree to a nap – in an empty Estonian church where they usually rent teaching space.
“I have to be the DJ while I’m going onstage,” Bryant says. “When you’re busy as a performer, you’re happy. You’re complaining all the time, but that’s when you’re happiest.”
Nearly fifty people watched the affair live. There were pulsating lights, several costume changes and endless opportunities to admire the timeless, sexy magic of the tango. The performance was joyful, certainly, but not ideal.
“We finished the show and we were very frustrated,” Faye says, remembering the technical glitch. “It was very challenging, and what you don’t get as a dancer by doing this livestream performance is the back and forth with the audience.”
The final song the night of their performance was Recuerdo by the Argentine tango musician Osvaldo Pugliese. “[Pugliese’s] music is very dramatic. He lived through a very difficult political time in Argentina,” Faye says. “Oftentimes, he would end up in jail because of his political stance, and they would put a rose on his piano, waiting for him to come back. … He was too popular to shut down.” The choice to feature his music was an intentional message to artists during this time.
That message is: persevere.