![\"Alvin](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lalc\/files\/2013\/04\/P1060338.jpg\")
<\/a>Alvin Rangel<\/p><\/div>\n
In a well attended presentation on Friday April 12 in Rubendall Recital Hall, Alvin Rangel of \u00a0Tango Vesre,\u00a0<\/em>introduced his project and gave a brief overview of modern Argentina’s history, and the evolution of Tango over the last 100 years.<\/p>\n Alvin Rangel, who is currently an associate Professor of Dance at California State University, began working on\u00a0Tango Vesre,<\/em> which means “Inverted Tango”, in 2010. From his website, Alvin Rangel describes his project:<\/p>\n “Tango Vesre\u00a0[Inverted Tango] is a dance performance that through live performance spotlights a 100-year \u00a0evolution of all-male tango dance in the Buenos Aires of 1910 and 2010.\u00a0\u00a0Tango Vesre\u00a0includes two duets,\u00a0Parallel Tango\u00a0by Alejandro Cervera and\u00a0Bound Tango\u00a0by Alvin Rangel. Although the work is framed within the Argentinean Tango aesthetics, the performance puts into motion issues of power negotiation, equality, marginalization, gender roles, sexual identity, acceptance, rejection and male dancing bodies.”<\/p>\n Rangel explained how Tango has become one of the most popular forms of dance, known for its “beauty, passion, drama and sexually-charged energy.” The tradition has established a heteronormative culture, where Tango has been branded as strictly a heterosexual dance. Tango has a clear leader and follower, emphasizing the macho Argentine culture, where the man is in control and the woman follows. Rangel wanted to break out of this strict tradition and explore the origins of tango in the slums and lower classes of Buenos Aires, and specifically when men danced with other men.<\/p>\n Rangel discussed his research into the history of tango and \u00a0reviewed the historiography. He found that there is gaping hole in information on male-male tango practices, even though it began during the formative period in the early twentieth century.<\/p>\n Rangel explains, “the lack of evidence concerning the male partnerships in tango\u2019s literature raised many questions for me as a dance scholar, dancer and choreographer.\u00a0 Therefore, I became interested in analyzing these male partnerships from historic, performative and choreographic perspectives, examining issues of homosexual bonding and sexual identity through tango dance practice.” In context of the discrimination of homosexuals in Argentine society in this early period, Rangel came up with the central question for his project, “Did the all-male tango dance practice enable closeted homosexuals to embody their sexual identity?”\u00a0<\/strong>He clarifies, “This question I raise does not assume that the male\/male partnerships were exclusively a homosexual performance, but rather considers how a homo-social milieu facilitated homosexual bonding.”<\/p>\n