El desvanecimiento de la forma
Participatory Public Performance
Co-Creator · Performer
Overview
El desvanecimiento de la forma (The Dissolution of Form) is a participatory public performance created collectively by Tangueteros for the 1st Buenos Aires Dance and Performance Festival in 2007. Conceived for the open esplanade of the National Library in Buenos Aires, the work invited passers-by to enter a shared performative experience in which tango became a space for encounter rather than a codified dance form.
Departing from conventional representations of tango, the performance explored the tension between inherited images of the genre and the lived experience of proximity, touch and human connection. The work unfolded through participation, dissolving the boundaries between performers and audience.
Tangueteros
1st Buenos Aires Dance and Performance Festival
National Library Esplanade · Buenos Aires · 2007
Context and Artistic Process
Created collectively within Tangueteros, the project emerged from an ongoing artistic investigation into tango as a social and performative practice. Instead of treating tango as a fixed vocabulary of steps or stylistic conventions, the performance questioned how its essential qualities might persist when its recognizable forms gradually disappeared.
Participants were invited to engage through simple actions centred on proximity, embrace and physical contact, transforming public space into a temporary environment of shared experience. As established choreographic structures dissolved, the encounter itself became the central artistic material.
The work proposed that tango exists not only as a dance but as a relational practice, where memory, presence and the negotiation of distance between bodies continuously redefine its meaning.
Documentation
About Tangueteros
This performance was developed within Tangueteros, the artistic collective that I co-founded and co-directed with Paola Ayala and Martha Bulgaroni. Through collaborative research, the group explored tango beyond its conventional formats, creating performances and interventions that connected movement, public space and contemporary artistic practices.
Festival Context
The performance was presented as part of the 1st Buenos Aires Dance and Performance Festival, an international non-profit event dedicated to artistic exchange in dance, performance and movement practices. Bringing together artists from Argentina, Spain, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, the festival emphasized experimentation, dialogue and audience participation over competition, considering the public an active component of the artistic experience.
Credits
El desvanecimiento de la forma (The Dissolution of Form)
Participatory Public Performance
Collective Creation: Tangueteros
Co-Creators and Founding Members of Tangueteros: German Ivancic · Paola Ayala · Martha Bulgaroni
Performers: German Ivancic · Paola Ayala · Martha Bulgaroni
Presented at: 1st Buenos Aires Dance and Performance Festival · 2007
Venue: National Library Esplanade, Buenos Aires, Argentina