'Forever Tango' returns to Broadway

NEW YORK -- Cigarettes, high heels and fancy footwork fill the Shubert Theater, as "Forever Tango" struts back onto Broadway.

The two-hour extravaganza is one of several shows sweeping into the city in tandem with the fourth annual NYC Summer Tango Festival - four days of classes, music and, of course, dancing under the stars.

"Forever Tango," which opened Saturday, contents itself with a starry backdrop, a sea of green-yellow lights that blink on like fireflies as the theater hums with the evocative strains of the bandoneon, the accordionlike instrument so essential to the dance. Dancer Gabriel Ortega's emergence from a giant bandoneon replica in the show's prelude underlines this close relationship.

Created and directed by musician Luis Bravo, the all-Argentine revue features 15 dancers, crooner Miguel Velazquez and a 12-man on-stage orchestra anchored by four bandoneons. Fedoras and aggressive male partnering give way to a ballroomlike atmosphere, as Bravo whirls the audience from the art form's birth on the streets of 19th-century Buenos Aires to its more modern manifestations.

Led by men with slicked hair as shiny as their polished shoes, the women whip across the floor like human compasses, feet inscribing invisible circles in and around their partners' legs or lashing up and out at improbable angles. Plunging necklines and sultry stares aside, the action happens below the belt in tango, as partners hook legs, parry and thrust in a sexual battle of wills.

Those legs can be formidable weapons - especially clad in spike heels, as a hapless Marcelo Bernadaz discovered in a broadly comic duet with Veronica Gardella. But, despite poor Bernadaz's best efforts, one finds little of the dance's dizzying sense of risk and restrained violence in "Forever Tango." Instead, the dancers play it safe. The result, though accomplished and pleasing to the eye, provides few thrills in a show too sanitized to satisfy.

"Forever Tango" plays at the Shubert Theatre through August 29.