Kraayenhof plays the play of seduction

Carel Kraayenhof & Sexteto Canyengue with Tango Heroes, Theater ‘t Voorhuys, Emmeloord, Saturday 14 October 2006.

As good-natured as the audience enters, the night café on the stage is filled by drops as well. When Carel Kraayenhof and Ville Hitula with their badoneons enter the room the lights go out and the festivity can begin. The jubilee party of twenty years’ travelling and playing.For this jubilee not only Kraayenhof’s Sexteto Canyengue is on stage, but also the dancing couple Arjan and Marianne and the singer Omar Mollo.Right from the first number Kraayenhof shows that the tango is many-sided and with this it seduces the audience. Numbers written by himself are exchanged with numbers of well-known Tango heroes. Some numbers are new to the audience, who for the first time make acquaintance with the sextet, other numbers are very well-known by their melodies and their use in commercialsamong other things. It is exceedingly varied and the calm, lofty numbers as well as the up tempo catch on.The tango excels as a number of seduction, which is more than perfectly expressed by the dancing couple. Every subtle change in the music leads to a change in their movement. It is not so strange that this unites so well if you know that for example “Almo de tango”has been especially written for this duo.With various numbers Omar Mollo joins in with a warm, heavy voice.This singer from Argentina does not sing in Argentine or Spanish, but especially in the language of Buenos Aires, the language of the tango.At any rate the thing he has in common with the musicians is his passion for the tango and their pleasure in bringing it to the public’s notice.There is constant eye contact and in mutual exchanges it radiates sheerpleasure. They have got used to each other’s ways completely and that may not be amazing, but it shows its completeness.It is breathlessly silent in the room when after an interval the two violinists Emma Breedveld and Bert Vos play a romantic, fragile number. It is a well-known and quiet number, “El dia que me quieras”. Consequently a warm applause is a deserved response from the audience.Within two periods of three quarters of an hour each Kraayenhof takes his audience along with him on a journey through time as well as through the world. And it appears that the audience does not want to take leave so quickly when about 300 people in the room give a standing ovation three times.So the play of seduction is is obviously mutual and results in an extra, which is highly appreciated by the audience.

Annemieke de Boer-Nierop, De Noordoostpolder