Operà
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The little ivory box is open, in the foreground: it is a music box. A small plastic dancer is spinning steadily with a slow gait in front of a desk calendar where the day Monday 5 September is circled with pink highlighter. Off-screen, the blurred outline of a red painting on the wall behind the scene can be glimpsed in the distance.
[On one side in town]
Determined steps of a woman walk along a stone road. She is wearing trainers and a tracksuit, carrying a gym bag.
[Elsewhere in the same town]
The Sparks is crowded and dark, white psychedelic lights intermittently illuminate a girl in the middle of the dance floor who is visibly dancing drunk.
[With the same intervals of light a dancer dressed in white dances gracefully alone on the stage of an empty theatre. The dances of the disco and the theatre alternate. The same passion of dancing seen by two different personalities].
The back door of the theatre opens onto a street without a backdrop. Deserted. The girl dressed in a tracksuit coming out is attacked by a figure we cannot see. She slams her head hard against the wall. She loses consciousness and falls face-first to the ground. Confused, blurred images. A rivulet of thick liquid slithers sinuously like a red snake along the joints of the stone pavement.
Twilight; late evening. The city is packed with people hurriedly returning home.
Ava walks drunkenly along the pavement, immersed in the perfect disregard of passers-by.
In the opposite direction Opal wanders similarly in a state of confusion. She too is completely ignored by the well-dressed citizens who populate the streets.
The two women continue on the same pavement in a very similar way, though for different reasons: Ava is bleary-eyed, wearing a little black dress, smudged mascara streaking her face; Opal is sweet, her expression lost, wearing a snow-white dress and bare feet. Both in need of help. Both completely ignored by the apathy of passers-by.
But then they cross each other in front of the underground subway stairs. They observe each other, they brush against each other. Ava caresses her face and seems to have sobered up. They hold each other in fluid movements, improvise a dance together. They know the steps, they dance in synchrony, they seem to be a reflection of each other.
A passer-by brutally separates them (he does not even realise he has bumped into them) and they are lost.
Opal is swallowed up by the crowd and is never seen again.
Ava returns in her inebriated state to grope around with a sense of dismay in her soul.
A bus pulls up at a bus stop nearby and instinctively Ava climbs onto it.
On the ground at the foot of the subway stairs, the little plastic dancer spins around on the muffled notes of the music box. Quick steps dart around it, miraculously avoiding it. Then, inevitably, it is kicked down the stairs of the subway.
The melody of the music box ceases to play.
[On one side in town]
Determined steps of a woman walk along a stone road. She is wearing trainers and a tracksuit, carrying a gym bag.
[Elsewhere in the same town]
The Sparks is crowded and dark, white psychedelic lights intermittently illuminate a girl in the middle of the dance floor who is visibly dancing drunk.
[With the same intervals of light a dancer dressed in white dances gracefully alone on the stage of an empty theatre. The dances of the disco and the theatre alternate. The same passion of dancing seen by two different personalities].
The back door of the theatre opens onto a street without a backdrop. Deserted. The girl dressed in a tracksuit coming out is attacked by a figure we cannot see. She slams her head hard against the wall. She loses consciousness and falls face-first to the ground. Confused, blurred images. A rivulet of thick liquid slithers sinuously like a red snake along the joints of the stone pavement.
Twilight; late evening. The city is packed with people hurriedly returning home.
Ava walks drunkenly along the pavement, immersed in the perfect disregard of passers-by.
In the opposite direction Opal wanders similarly in a state of confusion. She too is completely ignored by the well-dressed citizens who populate the streets.
The two women continue on the same pavement in a very similar way, though for different reasons: Ava is bleary-eyed, wearing a little black dress, smudged mascara streaking her face; Opal is sweet, her expression lost, wearing a snow-white dress and bare feet. Both in need of help. Both completely ignored by the apathy of passers-by.
But then they cross each other in front of the underground subway stairs. They observe each other, they brush against each other. Ava caresses her face and seems to have sobered up. They hold each other in fluid movements, improvise a dance together. They know the steps, they dance in synchrony, they seem to be a reflection of each other.
A passer-by brutally separates them (he does not even realise he has bumped into them) and they are lost.
Opal is swallowed up by the crowd and is never seen again.
Ava returns in her inebriated state to grope around with a sense of dismay in her soul.
A bus pulls up at a bus stop nearby and instinctively Ava climbs onto it.
On the ground at the foot of the subway stairs, the little plastic dancer spins around on the muffled notes of the music box. Quick steps dart around it, miraculously avoiding it. Then, inevitably, it is kicked down the stairs of the subway.
The melody of the music box ceases to play.