Lighter Than Woman

* with the ticket for the performance of July 09 it is possible to enter at 20.00 for Il canto delle balene by Chiara Bersani

The next project is one of the most emotionally complex commissions we have ever done. It’s the result of three years of conversations with the artist Kristina Norman, who was given a carte blanche for a new artistic creation. We invited Kristina to come to Santarcangelo, to spend time here, and the only question we asked was what do you see? What is it that you find exceptional in this place?
It was through Kristina that we got to know the amazingly strong and fierce community of badanti – almost exclusively female careworkers – who come to Santarcangelo from various countries in Eastern Europe, and the local families who employ them. Everybody learns a little Ukrainian during the process.

Lighter Than Woman is a documentary performance that reflects on how a group of women from wildly different backgrounds overcome the gravity of work; learning to live with ambivalence and finding meaning and joy in their new circumstances.
During the creative residency in Santarcangelo and Bologna within Atlas of Transitions Biennale, Kristina has met and filmed badanti, who appear on screen in this piece that merges moving image and performance. We meet Halina, a “badante di dolci” because her pies and pastries are extraordinary; Marina, a poet and the author of the hymn of badante, and many others. We meet the families for whom they work, and see the emotional complexity that comes with the labor of care.
We see the different forms that the desire for emancipation takes for each of these women. Moving to another country, freedom from heavy physical labour, pursuing professional careers. Creating art: the ultimate emancipation from reality. Or even overcoming literal gravity, as in the case of Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.
Together, these women defy all odds, create surprising alliances and build beautiful lives despite the state of “not-here-neither-there”, experienced as a constant state of weightlessness.
Norman weaves a beautiful, complex, unexpected narrative, that hopes to inspire a sense of pride in the tenacity of the human spirit.