Lisbon Tango Festival
Live event reportage
July 2018
Client: Self organized
For the second year in a row, the Lisbon Tango Festival team invited Carlos Teixeira, Mónia Abreu, Luís Frasco and myself to sketch during the event.
When sketching dancing couples, you always find yourself shifting back and forth between pose and movement, precise detailing and loose brushing.
Portraying tango dancers requires attention to their sharp halts in movement, the twirls of legs and bodies, the grips of the arms and hands and, to make it even more challenging, to particular emotions expressed in the couple’s faces.
The atmosphere of the Festival varies a lot, from the relaxed afternoon milongas, where the dancers take turns in getting to know each other’s styles and embraces, to the mesmerizing maestro’s shows on the timber stage of the ballroom in Voz do Operário. There’s always a different mood to sketch, and it shows in the results. Some were movement representations, other were faithful portraits, other still were color theory experiments with temperatures, contrasts and harmonies. In any case, tango dancers undoubtedly lend themselves to more sensuous and visceral sketches than other subjects.
