Tango Piazolla, choreographed by Carlos Matos, is inspired by the powerful music of Astor Piazolla: music full of romance, melancholy, drama, eroticism and strong contrasts. The dominant sensation of Tango is the contradiction between dream and reality. People meet each other with their own luggage of broken dreams in tow, looking for orientation and support; searching for happiness.
Astor Piazzolla, the founder of "Tango Nuevo" (a progression of the traditional Tango Argentino) had Tango running through his veins since his early childhood. Aged four, he was forced to emigrate from Argentina to New York with his family in 1925 due to the economic crisis at that time. This is where he learnt, for his father's sake, to play the piano as well as the bandoneon which would play a defining role in his creation of the tango nuevo.
In 1937 his family returned to Buenos Aires where a performance of the tango-ensemble of Elvino Vardaro turned out to be a crucial experience for him: Piazolla became fascinated by this new interpretation of Tango music. From that point on he perfected his skills in playing bandoneon and Tango became his new-found obsession.
Piazolla's music "knows" that Tango is all about desire: the longing for a lost childhood and youth; the longing for a street, a district or the lingering memory of old friends, lovers, first embrace, first kiss, the smell of a bar...
Portuguese choreographer Carlos Matos holds the position of artistic director and main choreographer of the dance company at the theatre Landesbühnen Sachsen in Radebeul next to the german city Dresden since 2013. After his career as a dancer in Portugal at the National Ballet - where he had the opportunity to dance as a soloist in many of the most known classical productions - other engagements followed in Luxembourg, Switzerland and Germany. There he has worked with renowned contemporary choreographers such as William Forsythe, Roberto Galvan and Jacopo Godani and later developed his own movement vocabulary. Carlos is prize winner at the International choreography competition in Hannover and has been active as a choreographer for almost 20 years now. A particular focus of his interest lies in the exploration of multimedia elements combined with contemporary dance as well as the combination of spoken and body language.