The Italian dancer Cristina Morganti, veteran soloist of Pina Bausch's company, does not try to hide the fact that she is no longer capable of doing what she did twenty years ago. What's more, she wants to show it on stage with Jessica and me, a show with an ironic tone and at times poetic, but above all, extremely personal. Putting herself in the voice of Jessica, an alter ego that she herself invented in her childhood, Morganti opens an internal dialogue to reflect on her years as a dancer. “Jessica is stainless, but Cristiana is not,” the artist joked, and that is precisely what the show is talking about. In her words, she “exposes the life of a dancer who is no longer so young.”
The novelty of this proposal is that throughout the show the dancer will address the spectators to question them directly. “When she speaks, it seems like she has been doing text theater all her life,” says Salvador Sunyer, director of the Montaña Alta festival. The dialogue will be key for the audience to immerse themselves in the dancer's deep autobiographical journey. “It is a show that looks towards my past, and then goes forward, towards the future,” explains the artist. At the same time, music will also be key. “It will not be a simple accompaniment,” according to the interpreter, “it will fulfill a crucial dramaturgical function” to understand the story.
This show, which has been touring stages around the world for nine years, was born at a transcendental moment in Morganti's life. It was then, ten years ago, when she decided to leave Pina Bausch's company and began a career as an independent artist. “In the shadow of a big tree, nothing ever grows,” was the phrase the artist used to explain her need to leave the company she was part of for 22 years. “I felt like a child starting to walk,” she confesses. After a life within the German company, she had to begin an exhaustive search to discover her own universe.
The strength of this proposal, according to Morganti, lies in its veracity. “The public will feel that what I tell is sincere, I am not representing another person.” Throughout the play, viewers will be able to hear some of the thoughts and doubts that the performer had when putting on the show and that she recorded with a small recorder. The montage that the dancer devised poses “an existential question" about her own life. Her performance is also accompanied by a video that will be projected at the back of the stage.
The Italian had previously participated in the Temporada Alta festival with the shows Behind the light, in 2022, and Moving with Pina, a tribute to the choreographer Pina Bausch, in 2017. Jessica and me can be seen for the first time in Catalonia this Wednesday, October 11, at the Performing Arts Creation Center - El Canal de Salt/Girona.
