Luis Bravo's FOREVER TANGO Set for Gallo Center, 1/10

"Luis Bravo's Forever Tango," an evening celebrating the passionate music and dance of Argentina, will scorch the Gallo Center for the Arts stage at 8 pm on Friday, January 10. The celebrated production, which has appeared on Broadway on three occasions, features 14 dancers, one vocalist and an on-stage 11-piece orchestra which includes "the instrument of the tango," the bandoneon.

Tickets for the performance range in price from $20 to $65, and may be purchased online at www.galloarts.org, by calling (209) 338-2100, or from the Gallo Center ticket office at 1000 I Street in downtown Modesto.

"Forever Tango," conceived by director, producer and composer Bravo, is performed to both traditional and original music. The production tells the story of the birth of the dance in nineteenth century Argentina. Thousands of men, having abandoned a then economically ravaged Europe, found themselves fraternizing with women of "the oldest profession" in the crowded packing houses, bars and street corners of Buenos Aires' barrios. The tango was born of this lonely and violent existence. Originally shunned by Argentina society as indecent, the tango became an overnight craze in upper-class Paris when Argentine intellectuals taught it while traveling abroad.

"The tango is a feeling that you dance," says Bravo, "a story you tell in three minutes. It's passionate, it's melancholic. It's tender, violent. More than just a dance, the tango is a music, a drama, a culture, a way of life."

"Forever Tango" opened on Broadway June of 1997 for what was expected to be an eight-week engagement. It ran for 14 months and has since been back to New York on two separate occasions, most recently in the summer of 2013, earning itself multiple Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations along the way. "Forever Tango" also has been featured on "Dancing with the Stars."

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