Solo Hotel Room


Created in 1989 by the STI, this solo became an itinerant piece and has now toured various cities on different continents. It has kept its initial idea and structure, but has progressively evolved and updated itself.

A nomad dance that is installed in the rooms of a hotel; a circular structure of 20 minutes’ duration in which the conclusion links up with the beginning and is repeated uninterruptedly 6, 8, 10 times.

It is a solo to be viewed in and by itself, the viewer attending as an accidental voyeur in a scene that takes place inside a hotel room, thereby discovering the intimacy of a protagonist who is not acting for the audience, someone who is trapped in the silence of their thoughts, of their waiting, of their solitude.

Calling the viewer’s attention to small details, framing reality like the filmed sequence of a movie, putting the audience in the same situation as the interpreter.

The interpreter, as an alien, has an uninformed gaze, raw, not linked to the story of the city, to the images they see from the windows.
The viewer sees, via the interpreter’s gaze, their own city, a territory of their own, catalogued but now new, strange.
Viewer and interpreter become at one and the same time the audience of spontaneous actors who randomly pass by, and we see through the windows and allow ourselves to write momentarily the script of their life.

The audience enters a room, alone and often, especially in large cities, not knowing the other spectators. These groups of 10 or 12 viewers share very intimately a scenic experience. A different feeling accompanies them as they exit, after having entered alone and unknown, and after having shared this fiction they know each other somewhat more.

At the time of creating Solo per a habitació d’hotel, what most interested me in the piece was to put interpreter and audience in different but ordinary contexts so as to change perception and turn the established roles of the stage ritual upside down, thereby compromising the interpreter as well as the spectator to participate intimately in the scene without the usual refuge of darkness and distance in which they are normally submerged.

Normally, hotels are bubbles that take us far from the peculiar reality of the places we visit, and we attempt to wrap ourselves in a neutral ambience of continental breakfasts, international television, standard mock-ups and postcards that make it difficult to know if we are in Japan, Italy, Venezuela or Germany. Nevertheless, it is the view from the windows that show us a tiny fragment of the reality which, seen as a framed landscape, is till farther away from us.

Choreography, video and dance Àngels Margarit
Music Joan Saura
Fados Argentina Santos
Management team Begonya Companyon
Montserrat Llabrés
David Márquez

SOLO HOTEL ROOM and cities:

Sitges, SUBUR 305 SESSIÓ CONTINUA 
Sitges Teatre Internacional
(Spain, 1989)

Hamburg, ATLANTIC 306. 
Internationales Sommertheater Hamburg
(Germany, 1990)

Montréal, DU PARC # 1410.
Festival de Nouvelle Danse de Montréal
(Canada, 1991)

Caracas, EL CONDE 504.
V Festival Posmoderno de Caracas
(Venezuela, 1993)

Adelaide, HILTON 1109.
Adelaide Arts Festival
(Australia, 1996)

Luzern, MONTANA 308.
LuzernTanz am Luzernertheater
(Switzerland, 2000)

Hamburg, ATLANTIC 306.
Internationales Sommertheater Hamburg
(Germany, 2000)

Yokohama, YOKOHAMA 1208.
Videodance Festival Yokohama
(Japan, 2000)

València, ASTORIA # 212.
VEO – Valènica Escena Oberta
(Spain, 2004)

Olot, RIU # 102.
Festival PANORAMA
(Spain, 2010)

Barcelona, Le MERIDIEN BARCELONA # 712. 
Dansalona
(Spain, 2010)


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En aquest espai, Margarit, gràcies sobretot a la seva gran presència, aconsegueix amb els seus passos i les pauses crear unes imatges rodones. No es tracta d’un espectacle -la durada no arriba al quart d’hora i no s’hi ensuma cap altra pretensió que la de presentar una experiència diferent.
…destaca per la seva eficàcia i bellesa.

Albert de la Torre, Diari de Barcelona, Barcelona, 1st Mai 1989

Hubo, sin embargo, algo destacable, interesante. Àgels Margarit y su Subur 305 sessió contínua. Una coreografia de quince minutos que se desarrollaba en el interior de la habitación y en la terraza.Una mujer sola sobre la cama, un café sobre una foto y un ventilador parado. La mujer baila, expresa su angustia, busca en el viento que mece las cortinas y en el sol que atraviesa las rendijas de las persianas y vuelve a su cama cerrando el ciclo. Quince minutos o un instante, una sensación convertida en danza.

Santiago Fondevila, La Vanguardia, Barcelona, 2nd Mai 1989

I, parlant de dansa, no voldria acabar sense fer esment de l’esplèndida seqüència Subur 305, amb què Àngels Margarit va obsequiar un públic que, de vuit en vuit, es congregava a l’habitació de l’hotel, per contemplar aquesta breu coreografia que per a molts constituirà el millor record de Sitges.
Subur 305 és una invitació a aguditzar els sentits per respirar, des de la nuesa d’una cambra, el crit imperiós del mar, que batega amb força enllà de la finestra.

Xavier Pérez, Avui, Barcelona, 5th Mai 1989

Como pocas veces esta experiencia teatral –Solo para habitación de hotel– me ha hecho reflexionar sobre el espacio. El espacio físico y el espacio imaginario creado por un cuerpo, por unos movimientos, por una realidad dentro de la realidad, tan parecidas y tan diversas.
Desde el punto de vista objetivo, concreto, bailar en cinco metros cuadrados supuso un trabajo matemático minucioso: su danza es un proyecto arquitectónico en el sentido estricto del termino, por lo que creo Margarit no deja nada al azar, ni practica en absoluto la improvisación, pero al uno encontrarse allí, casi formando parte de lo que sucede, se vuelve todo tan natural, tan espontáneo, tan vital, que pareciera ser lo que alguna vez uno mismo ha experimentado en el hotel de una ciudad desconocida.

Teresa Alvarenga, La Danza, Caracas (Venezuela), 1993

I have just been intimate with a stranger in her hotel room. It happened because she danced in her lonely room.
…Our memories of dislocations are only memories. Our reality is here in the city she has captured on her video camera.
…We leave, suddenly intimate with each other for we have shared a momenr with someone else. A moment? Fifteen minutes of performance -but far more powerful than many an hour and a half in a theatre.
…History is now and Adelaide.This dance performance will haunt you for a long, long time. See it.

John Emery, The Advertise, Adelaide (Australia), 2nd Marh 1996