On May 1, 2009 a historic dance event connected hundreds of people in cities all around the world for the first world-wide Milonga.
Like all ‘Tango Intervention’ events organized by artist Robert Lawrence, “Tango Panopticon” was also be a unique participatory conceptual art performance.
May Day is known as both a sensual pagan celebration of life in spring, and as International Workers’ Day. In cities and towns around the world couples and groups of tangueros will dance in unexpected public places marking this dual celebration of the 1st day of May. The Tango Panopticon ‘twist’ is that we will do this only in public places where we are being watched by government or private surveillance cameras. Shooting video of our own, we will surveille the surveillers. Everyone everywhere is invited to participate… to be covertly watched celebrating May Day, sharing the intimate embrace of tango.
For more information about this and other Tango Intervention projects please visit www.TangoIntervention.org
Tango is a practice already ready for struggle. It knows about taking sides, positions, risks. It has the experience of domination/resistance from within. Tango… …is a language of decolonization. So, pick and choose. Improvise. Hide away. Run after them. Stay still. Move at an astonishing speed. Shut up. Scream a rumor. Turn around. Go back without returning. Upside down. Let your feet do the thinking. Be comfortable in your restlessness. Tango.
-Marta E. Savigliano
Tango and the Political Economy of Passion
