 | REPERTOIRE Pral. 1ª |
Choreography: Ramon Oller
Music: Oscar Roig (recordings from Lucho Gatica, Nati Mistral and Jose Nieto)
Costumes: Merce Paloma
Light Design: Gloria Montesinos
Premiered by the NDT 2 at the At&T Danstheater of The Hague, on February 15th, 1990.
Premiered by the Compañía Nacional de Danza at the Jardines de Generalife of Granada, on June 24th 1993.
In this drama for a man and a woman, Ramon Oller wanted to take us to a world which many of us, fortunatly, only know by reference. It is a world full of frustrations, in which forbiden passions and inconfesable desires are our daily bread. Social represion makes us to abandonourselves to our dreams, which allows us to flee from the prototypes into which society wants to make us.
To give form and content to this story, situtated in the fifties, one looks back to when the escapist tendencies dominated social and cultural behaviour, of the last century, through ballet and music halls. The plot can seem as ridiculous as the majority of the librettos of the romantic ballets or the classics of that time, in which, by one means or another, the idea was to take the audience and the performers to the world of dreams.
The form proceeds from the exciting world of the music hall, which imposed partner dancing, a style that extended itself like an oil stain to the whole western world. And even though it may seem that this type of dance that Oller offers is not very orthodox, it is impotant to note that it is nothing more than a new representation of the primitive pair dances which have given an infinte variety of unforgettable movements, as well as having been the cause of endless misfortunes.
The duo is an act of precision, intimacy and courage more than any other choreographic creation. There is no escape possible for the scared creator, that only has two people on a stage to be able to create with. Therefore, before beginning, he must be very clear as to the for whom and why of his work.
A pas de deux is nothing more that a love triangle, in which the creator is left being the watcher of the game that he invented. And in this game intervene all of his fears, secrets and lies. Pral. 1ª is a story of halls, passage ways and patios, that ironizes on the necessity to live inseparably with our own reality. We are in the Spain of the fifties: New Year’s Eve, Christmas carols, dried milk, Cola-Cao, potato omelettes, Anis del Mono liquor, tambors, high roast coffees, cognac and ... Franco
I wanted to creaet going from the memories of our fathers: inventing what we have not lived and what they did not live back then. But, above all, so that we do not stop thinking about our lives and what our role in this life is.
