The Peacock Theatre - until 11th April 2009

With its opening scene set in a traditional “Milonga” - the dance halls in Buenos Aires where tango was born in the late 1900s - Tango Fire attempts to trace the story of this most alluring of dances. In a candlelit cafe, with a whirl of kicks, splits and endless costume changes, five couples tell the tale - or at least they try to.

Choreographer Yanina Fajar has done technically superb work with accomplished performers, but there aren’t strong enough characters, direction or design to pull the whole thing together and bring the Milonga to life. Forced into half-acted scenarios, the routines feel episodic, and they're punctuated by inexplicable scraps between hot-blooded boys and preening girls. Somehow this just detracts from the dancing, though not as much as the hideous, quasi-period costumes. I’m not sure that women ever did the tango in white-collared pinafore dresses with skirts split to the hip - let’s hope not.

The second half is up-to-date and in-yer-face as the couples aim to outmaneuver each other, Strictly Ballroom style, in some seriously competitive and spectacular duets (even if those one-handed lifts and in-the-air splits wouldn’t get past the most lenient of judges). Tango Fire may authenticate itself as “direct from Buenos Aires,” but it’s really about dazzling us with some extreme physical skill and nifty new moves, and  the dancers seem much more comfortable once they stop having to pretend it’s something else - it certainly work for the audience too. German Cornejo and his diminutive partner, Carolina Giannini, offer a particularly striking routine, as with effortless grace she’s twisted around his body in unexpected moves (rather like her one-legged purple costume is twisted around hers).

All five couples choreograph themselves with great inventiveness, and the slick speed and precision of their moves keeps the energy high. But what's missing is a sense of genuine passion - for all its puffed-up raunchiness the dancing’s more of a tea light than a fire. What a blessing that it has the extraordinary live band, Quatrotango, to provide some warmth. The sounds of piano (Gabriel Clenar), violin (Marcelo Rebuffi), bandoneon (Hugo Satorre) and bass (Gerardo Scaglione) provide the show’s most seductive embrace, and when the stage is bare and the spotlight is on them - Satorre and Rebuffi lost in their musical solos - there’s a fleeting moment of what it really feels like to be swept away by tango. Alongside a spectacle that dips and peaks, these guys are worth the ticket price alone.

Carla Evans - March 2009

Photographs: Mike Keating