Anette Moi
Tou Vindu, Tou Scene, Stavanger
27.2.-30.3.13
Mural of colorful tango dancers
Anette Moi presents colorful tango dancers, frozen in their passionate dance poses. Her unique style of bright colors and 2D personas are like caricatures of what we consider typical tango dancers. They are fixed in their movements, oozing passion. But is the passion between the couples or is it between each person and the viewer, you, or the camera? These people are not dancing together, they are posing for their viewers.
From the outside you see the whole scene, and each person is not as important as the mood of the whole scene. In the narrow gallery room you are too close, discovering that they all are flat figures painted on the wall. You need to carefully choose your viewing spot to be able to contemplate each figure as a person with characteristic traits.
Tango is considered the ultimate dance of passion. It is displayed in pictures of women in revealing dresses and provocative poses and men with bare chests and broad smiles. But is this the real tango or a staged version of it? Tango is never as visual passionate as on photos. Legs stretched up into the air, dresses barely covering strategic areas, roses held by the teeth, this is for real, but only in the touristic area La Caminita in Buenos Aires. The dancers strike their poses together with foreign tourists and hold it there as long as photographs are taken and the tip is payed. In the public squares and in the milongas (dance venues) the passion may be more real, but less visual. The dresses and the moves are beautiful but less provokingly sexual, rather subtile and honest.Though this is less photographic, as the couples are constantly moving, and the aestetic movements are quick, and appear at different moments for different couples. The passion is in the bodily dialogue between the dancers, not directed outwards to the viewer.
With as simle means as possible, just a dot in a circle, Anette Moi is able to convey these differences. The eyes are revealing where the dancers' focus are.
