Having Karina Smirnoff and Maksim Chmerkovskiy star in “Forever Tango” is like having Lady Gaga headline a polka party: One doesn’t have much to do with the other, but it’s guaranteed to sell tickets.
The “Dancing With the Stars” vets are ballroom pros, but tango isn’t just a dance style, it’s a state of mind — elegant, sexy and desperate. Wearing evening clothes, a man clasps his partner in a low embrace and drives her across the floor in a mixture of domination and desire.
Smirnoff and Chmerkovskiy give us exhibition ballroom steps with little tango soul. In the first act, he wore white tie and tails, while she sported sequins and a feathered wig. One complicated lift followed another: She emoted for all she was worth, while he impassively forklifted her over his head.
Chmerkovskiy unbuttoned for the next act, but played the human crane until the encore, when he cracked a smile while shimmying and playfully tugged at Smirnoff’s skirt.
There were eight other couples as well, doing steps ranging from lethal glamour to virtuoso acrobatics. Juan Paulo Horvath grabbed Victoria Galoto out of a hair-raising drop when she was millimeters from the floor. Even so, this cast didn’t seem as uniformly expert as those from the last incarnations of “Forever Tango.”
Another couple that lived up to the show’s reputation was Mariana Bojanich and Sebastian Ripoll. They started with a disquieting slowness, pivoting around like lacquered dolls, then scissored their legs violently on the floor as if making paper cut-outs. At the end, his hands went to her face as if to strike, but instead he dropped to his knees.
The show leaned so heavily on the “unhappily ever after” side of tango that the comic duets of Natalia Turelli and Ariel Manzanares were a welcome relief. Manzanares gently spoofed the stereotype by playing a bug-eyed dandy, but the couple cut their way from side to side as quickly as any other.
Smirnoff and Chmerkovskiy are sure to deliver for their fans. But if you want to discover what tango’s really about, keep your eyes on the others.