Conference: Tango! Dance the World Around: Global Transformations of Latin American Culture

Tango!

Dance the World Around: Global Transformations of Latin American Culture

Friday, October 26–Saturday, October 27, 2007
Agassiz Theatre
10 Garden Street
Radcliffe Yard
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Admission is free, and registration is required.
For more information, please call 617-495-8600.

Tango! engages with the history and aesthetics of a vital dance form in order to explore traditions of culture and politics in Latin America and across the world. Tango—the dance, the music, the symbol of passion and possession—is deeply embedded in histories of urban poverty, social marginalization, and masculine authority.

Tango!—the conference—will explore these local contexts of performance while, at the same time, posing larger questions of cultural transmission. Why has tango achieved such a remarkable success as a global metaphor? What gives it the capacity to infuse diverse national and regional contexts across the globe with the spirit of Latin American performance?

Tango! is cosponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the Humanities Center at Harvard, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, with the generous support of the Consulate General and Promotion Center of Argentina in New York.

Schedule

Friday, October 26, 2007

2:00 p.m. Check-in begins

3:00 p.m. Welcome
Homi Bhabha, Harvard University

Introduction
Deborah Foster, Harvard University

Lecture and demonstration
“Wallflowers and Femmes Fatales: Dancing Gender and Politics at the Milongas”
Marta Elena Savigliano, University of California at Los Angeles

4:30 p.m. “In Search of Tango Music History”
Pablo Aslan, bassist and composer

Saturday, October 27, 2007

8:30 a.m. Check-in begins

9:30 a.m. Welcome
Diana Sorensen, Harvard University

Introduction
Homi Bhabha, Harvard University

Keynote
“Borges and Tango”
Sylvia Molloy, New York University

10:45 a.m. Break

11:00 a.m. “Tango as a Cultural Form: Music, Dance, Film”
Florencia Garramuño, Universidad de San Andrés
Federico Miguel Monjeau, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Julie Taylor, Rice University
Moderated by Mariano Siskind, Harvard University

12:30 p.m. Break

2:00 p.m. “A Conversation with Yo-Yo Ma and Osvaldo Golijov”
Yo-Yo Ma, cellist
Osvaldo Golijov, composer
Moderated by Homi Bhabha

3:30 p.m. Break

3:45 p.m. “Tango as Politics: Gender, Class, Urban Life”
Alicia Borinsky, Boston University
Juan E. Corradi, New York University
Matthew B. Karush, George Mason University
Moderated by Merilee Grindle, Harvard University

Closing Remarks
Barbara J. Grosz, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

A reception with music led by Pablo Aslan, bassist and composer, and dancing will follow.