RIGA IFF online: Dzīves tango

Erica Liffredo, Krista Burāne 
Tango of Life
Il tango della vita
LV, IT, AR
2024, 76', lv, it
Age 12+

 

“I haven't devised new strategies for coping with this,” says Claudio, whose Parkinson's is progressing. He is well aware that his body is rapidly succumbing to the disease and will soon be wheelchair-bound, but tango is what keeps him going, both physically and mentally. Claudio has ardently promised his wife Ivana that they would tango together in Buenos Aires, but they are running out of time. The passion for tango brings them together with the composer Arturs Maskats – who becomes Claudio's therapist and his music an incredibly effective medicine. 

 

A defiant testimony to art transgressing national, mental and physical boundaries. The documentary portrait by the Italian director Liffredo and the theatre and film director Burāne interlaces the story of Claudio and Ivana with a dance metaphor – it takes two to tango. This premise stitches together both the protagonists of the film and other patients, as well as the meaning of relationships and life – especially creating and sharing. The tango therapy experienced by Claudio and Ivana inspired Maskats to write a new piece in collaboration with the accordionist Ksenija Sidorova. Tango has been described as an art of resistance by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, who, however, did not dance himself: “It is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.”