Behind the light
2022

After the success of Moving with Pina and Jessica and me, a new Solo piece created and interpreted by Italian born and Germany based artist Cristiana Morganti. Here, between words and dance, she confesses her personal formula to transform a profound personal and artistic crisis into a performance full of irony, a dark moment in life into a joyful impetus for a new beginning.

I moan in tears and shudder

Grim the day seems to me

I have a hundred worries all around me

I have a thousand furies raging in my breast

Pietro Metastasio “L’Olimpiade”, music Antonio Vivaldi

This unapologetic autobiographical piece tells the story of a personal and professional crisis, a sequence of events where each disaster triggers the next like a “domino”, causing the total loss of all points of reference, of every certainty. These personal vicissitudes resonate intensely with an audience well aware of the magnitude of the historical frame in which they take place, caught between a pandemic and a worldwide economic crisis that can be easily defined as one of the most destabilising events of recent history. Morganti tells us her personal global crisis with candour, with humour, sometimes skirting carefully around it and sometimes walking right across it, to tackle it head on and find its resolution in the regenerative power of self-confession, of art itself, whether screaming or whispering while tears run down her face as she sings, gently lying on the floor.

The piece is like a composition of miniatures, each framing the protagonist, in turn dancing, acting and singing, suspended on a white set onto which intermittently burst the original and refined projections created by Connie Prantera, like a counterpart to Morganti’s soliloquy.

Cristiana Morganti’s dance is infectious, the kind of dance that wants to make us dance, as we fall under the spell of the energy that flares from the catharsis of an open confession, sincere, suffering, but with a pain that never becomes self complacent, eased instead by laughter which forms ties between the author and her audience.

Accompanied by a musical collage that ranges from Vivaldi to the punk rock of Peaches, from Adolphe Adam’s Giselle to contemporary electronic legend Ryoji Ikeda, words and sound alternate, like in the irresistible outburst when listing the never ending number of stylistic no-go areas an artist has to navigate when their artistic formation has been under one of the most influential names in the history of Dance such as Pina Bausch, or the repeated and failing attempt to explain “the meaning of the piece” to the audience so they “can relax” (winking to the anxiety often felt by even an expert audience in decoding the ever growing hermeticism in contemporary dance). Many are the small and delicious stories told in a crescendo of spontaneous and explosive communion that lead us back to a finale delicate and self-reflecting. But all along Cristiana Morganti seems to be telling us that the piece needs no explanation, and that like with life itself, we are here to enjoy the journey.

Trailers

Press

(…) It is sure that rhythm and pauses alternation, perfect timings with musics, entrances and exits, sudden changes of style, the passage from a song to dance, to words, is something unique in Morganti. That special „quid“ of hers that in her journey as an author and interpreter has grown from creation to creation. An intelligent, self-mocking, acting and dancing comic quality in which drama, even the most tragic one, finds a liberation in laughter: that guiding energy which flows in her previous one woman shows, Moving with Pina and Jessica and me, in Behind the light is astonishing for 70 minutes.
Francesca Pedroni IL MANIFESTO

Morganti suggests an interpretation of the idea of loss, of time which passes by and of sadness. And she does it with irony and distance, with a deep almost pacified wisdom, by crossing with bare feet, without any protection, the fragile territory of feeling. The presence of Pina Bausch is clear, but it is only a background, in front of which the dancer shows what she is capable of. Cristiana dances, laughs, cries, acts like an actress, undresses herself and faces death and life, in a happy mixture of depth and lightness, talent and discipline. The best show of an excellet Temporada Alta Festival edition 2022.
Josep M. Fonalleras EL PUNT

A lively disclosure of ourselves which coloured limelights protect and save, a dance, voice and music mixture which articulates in a balanced assembly, pushed by a comic style that transforms even the most painful difficulties of life into laughter. Morganti’s choreographic and vocal score, behind those dark and painful moments, pulsates with vibrant vitality and creates a positive atmosphere in the audience; it’s a share of humanity which only best theatre can create.
DANZA&DANZA

Behind the Light is a collection of moments, memories, gestures, words, and visions that become collective the very moment they are activated by the performer’s extraordinary energy. (…) Cristiana Morganti, who has recently won the ANCT National Association of Italian Critics Award 2022, is adept at changing registers: she dances, sings, narrates, shouts, and moves from drama to jokes with the lightness of the greats. Martina Tiberti SIPARIO De bouts de notes en mini-films, elle compile le scénario de Behind the Light sens protection, sens filtre, entre geste, texte et videos, elle y sublime cette traverse secouée devenue “accidentellement comique”. Catharsis réussie pour Morganti.
TELERAMA

Le parti d’en rire colle à la peau de la danseuse et comédienne Cristiana Morganti. A peine a-t-elle ouvert la bouche, mercredi 8 mars, au début de Behind the Light, à l’affiche, jusqu’au 11 mars 2023, du Théâtre des Abbesses, à Paris, que le public se gondole. (…) Est-ce son capital sympathie à l’italienne qui met du sourire dans la moindre de ses phrases ? Un peu, sans doute. Mais surtout son talent ciselé à faire feu comique de tout. (…) Le tempérament de clown à la Charlie Chaplin de Morganti se révèle dans un numéro magique: assise sur une chaise, elle invente une langue des signes finement explosive en racontant ses difficultés d’artiste étiquetée «bauschienne». (…) Vers la fin du spectacle la danseuse réserve des moments troublants, incertains. Alors qu’elle ralentit peu à peu une diagonale de pas comme si elle songeait à autre chose ou avait perdu le fil, des émotions floues, tout en nuances irisées, enveloppent le plateau de douceur. Et ça va très bien à Cristiana Morganti.
Rosita Boisseau LE MONDE

Behind the light est un joyeux pêle-mêle, un heureux puzzle, celui d’une danseuse soudainement désoeuvrée.(…) Une danse merveilleusement déliée, comme toujours et fortement expressive,
ponctuée de commentaires aussi caustiques que sarcastiques, autodérision affirmée, exprimant une vérité intime. Avec ça, un sens de l’image formidable et de la formule définitive. Et Pina Bausch? La question revient, inévitable. Mais comme on secoue ses cheveux, geste pinabauschien par excellence, Cristiana Morganti en est désormais libérée, et dans son passé de danseuse du Tanztheater, lien irréfragable, a trouvé là désormais, et au final, une formidable liberté plus qu’un carcan.
UN FAUTEIL POUR L’ORCHESTRE

Behind the Light est aussi scandé par une série de solos splendides. Cristiana Morganti a beau se moquer d’elle-même et de son âge, son art est intact. Elle possède ce don rare d’allier le mouvement classique et le geste contemporain. (…) Et puis arrivent ces réminiscences du passé, tel ce cours de danse joué sur l’air de récitatifs du Don Giovanni de Mozart, dialogue succulent entre le professeur de danse et son elève. (…) Cristiana Morganti montre des qualités d’écriture incontestables et un talent comique qu’elle sait utiliser mais doser avec subtilité. (…) C’était la première fois qu’elle proposait Behind the Light en français. La danseuse fut visiblement émue par l’accueil du public parisien, une ovation debout. Dans cette forme de l’autobiographie dansée si personnelle, Cristiana Morganti sait nous parler de tous et de nous. Elle prouve que l’art est là aussi pour nous aider à surmonter nos peines.
DANSES AVEC LA PLUME

Elle danse, chante, raconte, hurle, passe du drame à la blague avec la légèreté des grands. L’attention du spectateur est sans cesse sollicitée par les mouvements d’une crise incessante, tandis que La Morganti interroge sans relâche son rapport un peu schizo à son corps, à la danse, et surtout à la présence à l’ère 2.0. Avec espièglerie, elle nous raconte par le geste et la parole ses essais et ses déboires. Elle déploie pour nous, tel un journal de création, une sorte de conte tragicomique, poétique, qui parle de la vie.
LA TERRASSE