The secret of Tango Argentinos lies in the passionate connection between two dancers, their intimacy and fusion as a dance couple, the free improvisation and the falling into the music.

Between the contrast of the feelings of lonelines and existential hardship of Argentina’s immigration waves and the lightness and passion of a fashionable Parisian dance, the dance style of sensual and emotional Tango Argentino unfolded. Surrounded by a mysterious aura, it fascinates beyond the borders of Buenos Aires and at the same time exerts a magnetic attraction on dance enthusiasts.

As an observer, Marlen Wagner explores the mysterious facets of Tango Argentinos in “Tango – let me into your secret”. Her photographic works show snapshots of chance encounters or deliberate appointments with individual dancers and dance couples. Marlen Wagner documents the movements of the dancers, who give themselves completely to the tango, the music, simply to the energetic feeling of dancing. In her photographic art, she varies what she sees thematically from her point of view. She makes the dynamics of the dance movements perceptible by emphasising blurs. Outdoors, she plays with the light and shadows cast by the dancing bodies. She relieves the mirror of a dance space of its usual function as a control image of the movement by reversing reality and dream, dance space and mirror surface. Texts and photographs by other artists accompany Marlen Wagner’s works: Anjolie York, Robert Krokowski and Ulrike Warmuth participate with their own texts and photographs.

Marlen Wagner frames her conception with typical tango music of the 1930s as well as short film sequences, thus providing multifaceted insights into the mystery of her/the Tango Argentino.

Anne Wonneb, Berlin 2014

PUBLIKATION

Marlen Wagner, Tango – let me into your secret. Berliner Impressionen