It's been one month since we competed in the finals of Norske Talenter and we finally have the time to sit down and reflect on the experience. Participating in Norske Talenter was a wonderful, challenging and exciting journey. We spent 6 months choreographing four different choreographies, rehearsing numerous hours each week on Sundays and on holidays, falling from the new tricks we were practicing, getting injured, getting back up and doing it again. After the 1st round we had one month to choreograph and practice for the 2nd round. We chose an original arrangement of Bahia Blanca by El Muro, a Norwegian/Argentine tango group. The producers of the show told us in the beginning that each round should be more impressive than the last. And this was one of the most challenging parts of choreographing for this show. For the 2nd round we added a few new elements to make it slightly more exciting than the 1st round and we were thrilled when we moved on to the semi-finals.
After the 2nd round we had a little over three months to prepare for the semi-finals. We decided to go all out because we had some time to prepare and because our goal was to make it to the finals. This time we had the honor to use the powerful and beautiful version of the famous tango Zum, by Cristian Zárate’s orchestra. Francisco Forquera worked with Zárate to produce this song for his show Arrebato de Tango and we are so grateful that Francisco gave us the rights to use this song. We had decided in the beginning to include a few fancy tricks we had never done before. We were both quite nervous about doing them for the first time on live television but we also wanted to challenge ourselves and show the judges and the audience something very different from the first 2 rounds. Luckily Jazzy Ruiz helped us with the tricks and put the final touches on our choreography. Preparing and rehearsing Zum was exhausting and we both got injured along the way. But in the end we were very pleased with the results, especially the enthusiastic and exciting response we received from the judges and the audience. When we were selected to move on to the finals we felt as if we had already won.
Video from the Semifinals
Since we had spent so much time preparing for the semi-finals we hadn’t really even thought that much about the finals. We had decided on the song and we had a rough idea of what we wanted to do, but we had only one month to prepare. For the finals we invited El Muro to play live. We chose their version of the traditional tango Malena because it would help us tell the story of tango. We created a simple scenography to invite the audience into a 1930’s milonga or dancehall in Buenos Aires where a man and a woman meet to dance tango, and through the dance show their passionate, yet complicated relationship. This was also a first for us because we had never really choreographed or tried to dance a story. Although the choreography was slightly less challenging technically, it was more difficult with the expression in the movements and the small details. Luckily a wonderful stage dancer who was visiting from Buenos Aires, Daniel Urquilla coached us in our last few rehearsals before the finals and really helped us to fine tune the expression and the movements to make our roles more clear and to tell the story we wanted to tell.
Video from the finals
Although we didn’t win, we fulfilled our goal to make it to the finals and to show Argentine Tango to the Norwegian audience. Dancing on live television for hundreds of thousands of viewers after spending over 10 hours in the television studio is a unique and thrilling experience and the mental preparation is almost as important as the physical one. We were delighted that we had the opportunity to participate in Norske Talenter and we are thankful to those of you who supported us along the way. We couldn’t have done it without you.