KEY POINTS:
Take 10 of Argentina's most sizzling dancers, the essential four-piece band of piano, violin, double bass and "bandoneon" - an accordion type instrument aquiver with emotion. Add a very fine singer.
Dress the girls in a carnival of skimpy gowns, plunging to navels, split high on thighs. Sleek back the men's swarthily handsome heads with plenty of patent pomade and polish their shoes.
Then set alight with the gutsily sensual ritual that is the tango: the almost polite upper body embrace atop a conflagration of rolling pelvises, high kicks, back flicks, lunges and leaps, feet drilling out the essential rhythm, that painfully dangerous looking technique of slicing legs, half of them armed in fearsome stilettos, between the partner's pair!
There is just one problem with this Tango Fire.
Instead of being swept along by the colour, the swirls of dry ice recreating the smoky atmosphere of dance hall or bordello, in which the tango has its roots, instead of being drawn into the drama of movement and music, I am repelled by the extreme decibels of the "sound design".
It is worse when the poor singer, Pablo Lago, takes up his microphone. The amplification creates excruciating distortions. It is bearable only with fingers plugging ears. I learn to dread the emergence of this feted star from the wings. When, I wonder, did the Milonga have to rival a rock band?
And so Tango Fire takes on all the charm of the Buenos Aires Barbie Show with the constant changing of extravagant gowns and arrays of extravagant matching shoes, the painted-on pouts and practice-perfect smiles. Mating ritual by Mattel.
It is a great shame, because these are fine dancers and fine musicians. In the first half they trace the evolution of the dance form from its bohemian beginnings to the salon style of the modern milonga.
The second half lets rip with an exposition of the show dance. The kicks are higher, the splits wider, the legs slice at lightning speed and the couples perform lifts, throws and catches of acrobatic virtuosity. Just turn down the sound!
