- This is the story of the Dancing Paradise, a ballroom club that pursued the illusions of an imaginary far away, a history of the province to which in fact was fine being itself. And the story of Paola, queen bee of the night world without sin and guilt, unforgettable matron of a story that will live on forever.—Sandro Bozzolo
- To recount the essence of a place with all its hidden corners; to find beauty where - apparently - there isn't any. These were the motivations which underlie Dancing Paradiso: to leave hidden what should remain so, and to turn on the lights and reflectors, for the last time on the lives that have kept alive the mystery. The Dancing Paradise was, for decades, a place of possibilities. A place more similar to a distant elsewhere, light years away, so far away that its concrete representation, deep in the province of Piedmont, assumes stereotypical tones. Smooth music for the illusion of dance, western characters for a likeness of America, sequins and glitter of modern kitsch. In the seventies, the Italian Province knew - with at least a ten-year delay in contrast to the city - a sudden well being and its inhabitants wanted to experience modernism and a new way of being to loose themselves in the night. The Dancing Paradise of Bastia Mondovì, in its own way, offered this possibility to all. Also, Dancing Paradise - the movie - is a place of possibilities. The possibility of looking at the scene and reliving everything once again. The possibility to relive the magic spell and hide it in a drawer for ten years until the time was really ripe. In [Month 2007 - Insert the right date] the camera has reopened its prohibited doors of the old Dancing and has blown away the dust, and for a moment it all seemed real, like nothing had ever ended. But then fell another period of waiting and oblivion, waiting for time to continue to do its work, and that everything - images in super8, digital images, present and past - ended on the same level, the level of things that will never die. Paola is left, the most important protagonist of the Dancing Paradiso, Paola the matron, and the maternal Paola. The narration unveils her only in the second part, respecting her mystery, by probing deeply her intimate relationship with her "mission" to which she dedicated most of her beautiful years. " To make people happy", that says it all and means nothing because the Dancing Paradise (the place itself and the film) there is no need to be didactic. Each element is at it appears, and it doesn't matter if it appears in a thousand different ways, it doesn't matter if Paola seems, at the same time, the victim and queen of her own game. words themselves become contradictory and filled with hidden meanings: expressions that Paola uses to define herself as finally a free woman, to our ears today, describe the reality of female subjugation and sinister chauvinism that Italian campaigns struggled to leave behind, in the early years of "modernism". But it leaves space for another doubt: maybe, pushed by the politically correct and collective hysteria, has our contemporary society irretrievably lost its lightness? The example of Paola and patrons of the Dancing Paradiso seem to suggest precisely this: in the absence of superstructures and in the simplicity of language, everything seemed to really work. And people went away happy. This is the story of the Dancing Paradise, a ballroom club that pursued the illusions of an imaginary far away, a history of the province to which in fact was fine being itself. And the story of Paola, queen bee of the night world without sin and guilt, unforgettable matron of a story that will live on forever.
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