There were nerves in the environment, a few hours before the premiere. The central Malibran Theater is located in a small square in the center of Venice. Tourists walk, like a meek flock, just two streets away, with their ice cream in one hand and mobile with the Google Maps in the other. Marcos Morau (Ontinyent, 43 years old), director of the La Veronal Dance Company, one of the Spanish formations with the greatest international projection, confessed his restlessness, the same morning of the premiere, at the back door of the theater. The entrance of artists gives a coqueto channel where, while the creator attended to Catalan television, the gondolas did not stop passing. Venice is a story city, even on the first day of August. “I trust that Los Angeles will go down tonight,” says Morau with a smile. And Los Angeles went down: the show liked and the public applauded with desire.
The show is titled The mort and spring, He had its world premiere this weekend at the Venice Biennial of Dance and in September will open the season of the National Theater of Catalonia. It is inspired by one of the darkest and cryptic novels of Mercè Rodoreda, the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. In fact, the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) will dedicate an exhibition next December. Unfinished work that was published once the author had already died, THE MORT I THE SPRING It is set in a nameless town for an indeterminate time. The desire, death and the terror regime in which its inhabitants live is read, inevitably, in Iberian key: all is war, exile and repression. In Catalonia there has been the popular image of Rodoreda in its last stage, an affable white mane grandmother writing about flowers and taking care of her garden, but THE MORT I THE SPRING It is a dark, cruel, ruthless work. The assembly of the Veronal is dark as a black painting of Goya and solemn as a requiem mass.
“I am an artist, not a journalist,” said Morau in the conversation with the public that took place just after the premiere. That nobody expects, therefore, a faithful adaptation to the novel: “I am not interested in explaining or describing the book, what I want is to do a personal work inspiring myself in the world of Rodoreda.” The topic defines spring as an explosion of color and life, but it is also the inevitable condemnation that resurrects, year after year, which humanity does not care at all. The flowers sprout again, regardless of whether humans continue in this world. Clinical depression is the greatest proof of the extreme cruelty of spring. Morau cites Eliot OA Francis Bacon, two of his reference artists, and has created a show that is almost a concert. Here the original music has a lot of weight, composed and interpreted live by singer Maria Arnal, which the Italian public discovered and applauded, and that will surely fall in love there where the international spectacle tour passes.
We must also highlight Uriel Ireland’s great sound work: music and voices happen incessantly, sometimes some of them, and dog barking and bells contribute the atmosphere that the Italian public recognized perfectly. We are all brothers, we are all from the south. The choral song, the jota and the sardana (minimalist and deconstructed) coexist with the loudest electronics. Red cable microphones capture the breath (and the soul) of all those who are on stage.
In the staging of THE MORT I THE SPRINGmusic, sound and light are almost everything: the space designed by Max Glaenzel is very naked, and the few elements that it houses have a great symbolism: a church organ, some pulleys, a container, a red truck. The Silvia Delagneau costume continues in the black line, house brand, in one of the most monocolors that Morau has signed: the ram flashes are the only touch of color between white and black predominant, with an explosive end that we will not reveal. The skirts also dance, and how. Bernat Jansà, another usual troupe De Morau, signs an almost expressionist lighting. The strobe light makes Maria Arnal look lift, and the flashes in red are pure blood, ephemeral hemorrhages that appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. Jansà and Ireland commented on Marcos Morau’s level of demand, known for creating their shows until the last moment, even a few minutes before the curtain is lifted.
Uriel Ireland has been working with the company Count of Torrefiel for years (Ontinyent, center of the universe), And even being accustomed to a level of great demand, he confesses that he had never seen Morau’s ability to work. Here is the secret of the success of the Veronal: the Valencian creator is known to surround a high level team, which makes his artistic dreams come true and that they almost become cookers of his total works of art.
And we haven’t talked about dancers yet. Because, although Morau builds worlds to which the “dance” label is a bit small, we are talking about the dance biennial, which invited this newspaper to the premiere of THE MORT I THE SPRING. Eight excellent dancers convert the visions of Morau in motion, where Lorena Nogal stands out, which even stars in a brief scene with text (without special effects, although it seems lies), and Shay Partush, a very expressive performer who also signs the choreography assistance. It costs a bit to understand the texts of Arnal’s songs, which rest on an almost mystical reverberation: in Venice the show had over -senses and will also have them in Barcelona. It should be noted that THE MORT I THE SPRING It is a show in Catalan, and that both the title and the text will always be, where it is represented.
The monologue that the dancer Marina Rodríguez, shouting and with a precious Valencian accent, which puts the spotlight at more than one moment is overwhelmed: “Voldreu die and I could not!” (You will want to die and you can’t!). Mercè Rodoreda’s voice also appears in the show, and what happens with the Magnetophone film shows that Morau’s intentions are very clear. “Kill Your Idols,” some say. Sometimes, the greatest tribute is to kill the father. In this case, Marcos Morau has killed the mother of Catalan literature to make her a universal classic.