March 20-22: The NOCCA Institute & New Orleans Ballet Association Present Unión Tanguera  In The Full-Evening, Contemporary Tango Show “Nuit Blanche”

March 20-22: The NOCCA Institute & New Orleans Ballet Association Present Unión Tanguera In The Full-Evening, Contemporary Tango Show “Nuit Blanche”

The NOCCA Institute & New Orleans Ballet Association present Unión Tanguera
in the full-evening, contemporary tango show Nuit Blanche (Sleepless Night)

“The performers are simply wonderful. The women are glamorous and shimmering. The men are virile and debonair.” — Broadway.com

“…taking Tango to places you’d never expect to find it.” — The Village Voice

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The sexy and flirtatious tango takes center stage when Unión Tanguera makes its New Orleans debut with the stylish, full-evening show Nuit Blanche (Sleepless Night), a contemporary tango event, hailed by The Oregonian as “extremely seductive and ravishing.” The NOCCA Institute and the New Orleans Ballet Association (NOBA) present three performances at NOCCA’s Freda Lupin Memorial Hall on Friday, March 20 and Saturday, March 21 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 22 at 2 p.m.

Unión Tanguera was founded in 2002 by world-renowned and trailblazing tango partners, Claudia Codega and Esteban Moreno. An innovative, contemporary tango company that fuses Argentine tango with modern dance, French theatrical sensibilities and humor are added to create performances that are sublime.  Based in Lyon, France and Buenos Aires, Argentina, this ensemble of seven virtuoso tango dancers and a quartet of Buenos Aires’ finest musicians are reimagining and experimenting with the traditional style of pure tango and creating an “absolutely authentic and polished piece of contemporary theater.” Society, Austria

Set in a nightclub at the end of a late-night milonga, Nuit Blanche illuminates the wanderings, desires, instincts and fears that unfold in one sleepless night.  The music for the Nuit Blanche combines traditional tango recordings and original compositions performed live by Buenos Aires-based Quartet Lupanar.  Acoustic and electronic sounds converge to create a unique soundtrack, featuring violin, bandoneon, piano, and double bass.

About Nuit Blanche

“…a tempestuous evening inhabited by milongueros with movie-star glamour.”  The Oregonian

 Nuit Blanche (Sleepless Night) opens on a scene in a cabaret-milonga (nighttime tango club). It is the end of a traditional tango show, when the performers return to their lives as milonguer­os (milonga goers), joining their audience to continue dancing. A woman and a man improvise in a confined, almost pitch black area while the rhythmic and cyclic bandoneón music plays in the background on this unique night. Out of this intimate environment arises true-to-life tango; traditional in its soul and at times experimental in its form. The dancers weave in and out of their sensual abrazos (embrace) with mixed emotions, including loneliness, hope, despair, friendship, passion, love, celebration, and defeat. Nuit Blanche explores a night when social dancing brings people together using tango as their poetic means of communication.

For the concept and parts of the choreography of Nuit Blanche, Codega and Moreno worked in collaboration with the company Modos Vivendi (directed by Rolan Van Löor and Jorge Crudo). Since its premiere in 2010, Nuit Blanche has toured Italy, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States.

A limited number of tickets are still available.  Single tickets are $50, and students with a valid student ID can purchase tickets for $35. Tickets may be purchased by calling the NOBA Box Office at 504-522-0996 or online at NOBADance.com  through 4:30 p.m. on Friday, March 20.  The NOCCA Box Office will open at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday for sales and will-call, and at 1 p.m. on Sunday.

Unión Tanguera in the community

Artistic directors and celebrated master teachers Claudia Codega and Esteban Moreno will teach a tango master class on Thursday, March 19 from 7:15 – 8:15 pm. Pre-registration is required and the master class is $15 per person.  Following the class will be a FREE community milonga with members of Unión Tanguera from 8:15-10 pm.  The master class and milonga will be held in NOCCA’s Chevron Forum at 5 Press Street (across Chartres Street from the main NOCCA campus) To register for the master class or for more information, call 504.522.0996 ext. 203 or click here.

This residency/performance is supported in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louisiana Division of the Arts.

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