A beautiful start – reminiscent of Pina Bausch. Or perhaps even a Gotan Project gig. A screen fills the stage, and on it we see a milonga in progress, the camera wandering over the images of the couples dancing beautifully with each other, oblivious of the camera. Regular people, on a night out in Buenos Aires. And this intimacy and oblivion is the point. Tango is about the relationship between the dancers, not the response of the onlooker, and as such is not a performance form, it is a social dance form.

A dilemma that Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui acknowledges in his programme notes to M¡longa. How do you make a performance piece out of a dance form that isn’t, in its essence, intended for the stage? He is not alone in this problem. Many have gone before him, and he stands on their shoulders. Indeed, many of the tango performers in this show, and his chief tango consultant/rehearsal director Nelida Rodriguez, have been there with this dilemma for decades. She is a veteran of Tango Argentino, the 1980s show that brought Argentine tango to the world. (I saw this show in New York in 1981/2, and it opened my eyes to the wonders of the form, for which I’ll be eternally grateful.) In this, and many subsequent shows that sprung from it, such as the Tango Por Dos repertoire (also seen at Sadler’s Wells in recent years), the answer to the dilemma has often been to present an onstage history of the dance as it progresses through the 20th century, from its roots in La Boca (the old port area of Buenos Aires) to the salons of the city. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui eschews this idea, and offers instead an odd patchwork of scenes that purport to show a meeting of contemporary dance and tango in its reflection on what happens during a milonga (confusingly perhaps for tango outsiders, the word ‘milonga’ means both a social dance occasion, it’s most usual meaning, but also refers to a faster and perkier dance form that is part of the tango family).

The only problem is that although he perhaps thinks this is something new, Tango Nuevo has been the toast of BA (and elsewhere) for many decades now; and many tango dancers (including some of the Argentinians he here employs) are also trained in contemporary dance, and have been exploring the onstage dynamic between the two forms for years. Go to any tango show in Buenos Aires – be it at a commercial club or at an arts venue or festival – and you will see scenes almost identical to those presented here on the Sadler’s Wells stage. Indeed, presented by the same dancers! I know that is irrelevant for those seeing the show (the vast majority, I suppose) who are not serious tango aficionados, but for those of us who are, the response is ultimately that this is a very pleasant evening, with high production values, and wonderful dancing (by some of Argentina’s finest), but there is nothing innovative about it.

Believe me, this is not the first tango show to feature a row of chairs (eyes across the dancefloor), a wallflower abandoned by her man, a three-way all-male dance, or a nod towards the traditional Apache dance-fight. And on that latter scene: in the interest of feminist consciousness, you really cannot and should not, in the 21st century, have a scene in a contemporary dance piece in which a woman is grabbed by the back of the head, presented without humour or irony. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui says that he isn’t afraid of the cliches – I’d say be afraid, be very afraid, unless you have the means to interrogate those cliches. There is also the nagging spectre of cultural appropriation…

Having been reminded of Pina Bausch in the opening scene, I can’t help, throughout this show, think what she would have made of the material. Indeed, what she did make of investigations of social dance, both European and South American, in many of her shows, including Kontakthof, Waltzer, Masurca Fogo, et al. I long for the sort of loving deconstruction that is the hallmark of her work.

There are some scenes that spark my interest, showing an intent to take things beyond the regular tango show format. I love the use of film, especially the way live performers interact with the moving images – gorgeous city landscapes of Buenos Aires, or multiple images of the dancing bodies. Some of the use of film windows and cut-up boxes reminds me of Carlos Saura’s films. There is a good use too of cut-out 2-D figures and shadows to create a lovely sense of the faceless ‘others’ in a milonga that surround a dancing couple who only have eyes for each other. Set and video design is by Eugenio Szwarcer, who has done a sterling job.

And it has to be said again, the tango dancers are wonderful – with a special accolade to legendary traditional dancer Esther Garabali (who was featured in Carlos Saura’s Tango), and to Vivana D’Attoma and her longterm partner Gabriel Bordon, who have gravitas, versatility, and a brilliant and theatrical sense of humour, particularly in the milonga scene (second sense of this word employed here). The musicians too, under the leadership of composer/musical director Fernando Marzan – a full tango orchestra of piano, bandoneon, violin, guitar, and bass – who deliver all the classics, from Gallo Ciego to Libertango and beyond, with dash and panache .

M¡longa was created in 2012, and has toured the world with enormous success since its premiere in 2013. This is  the last night of the current run, and naturally there is a standing ovation for the team of twelve dancers and five musicians. It is a palpable hit for Sadler’s Wells. a solid piece of entertainment, and if I were someone who’d bought a ticket looking for a good night out that  was easy on the eye and brain, I wouldn’t be disappointed. But I’m here on a press ticket, with an expectation (created by the publicity for the show) that Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, a renowned contemporary choreographer, would be creating an unexpected and interesting response to the time he has spent in Buenos Aires. Something that genuinely pushed back the boundaries. That I didn’t see.