The power of Pina Bausch

What is is about the late choreographer that inspires such admiration? Liz Hoggard asks the devotees
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7 June 2012

Her influence reaches all corners of the arts world, from Lady Gaga to Rachel Whiteread and Wim Wenders, so a month-long marathon of Pina Bausch productions has been eagerly anticipated.

In the world of contemporary dance this is as big as it gets. The centrepiece of the London 2012 Festival is a unique collaboration: Sadler’s Wells and the Barbican are staging Pina Bausch’s dance cycle, 10 works inspired by cities, performed by the company she founded in her native Germany, Tanztheater Wuppertal.

Bausch, who died three years ago, is the choreographer who changed the nature of live performance with her blend of dance and theatre (Tanztheater). Her contribution to the arts is equal to that of Samuel Beckett or Francis Bacon, says Artangel co-founder Michael Morris, who produced all her British shows before this.

Back in the early Seventies, her multi-media productions were shocking. There was no linear narrative. In a sequence of captured moments, dancers threw themselves at chairs; lit fires; banged each other’s heads against walls; wept and embraced. Bausch often used live animals on stage, too — chickens, sheep, even a hippopotamus.

Today her influence is everywhere, from Lady Gaga’s concerts to promenade theatre such as the National Theatre and Rupert Goold’s Earthquakes In London.

Her dancers break conventional rules about age and shape. Many pieces explore the volatile relationship between men and women — tender, thrilling, cruel. But she hated theorising about her work — “I am not interested in how people move but what moves them.”

The look of a Bausch production is always stunning. She has a fashion following who love the fluid dresses that seem to have a life of their own. The sets for the World Cities cycle promise to be extraordinary too — from the six-metre-high hill of red silk flowers for Der Fensterputzer (Hong Kong) to the bricked-up stage for Palermo, Palermo. Soundscapes to the pieces mix waltz, samba, Tom Waits, P J Harvey.

Pedro Almodóvar persuaded Bausch to perform scenes from her iconic piece Café Müller in his film, Talk to Her. After her death, Wim Wenders made the Oscar-nominated 3D documentary, Pina, which brought a whole new generation of fans to her work. In a 37-year career, she inspired artists from the dance world and beyond. We asked a number of them, what is it about Pina?

MICHAEL MORRIS

Co-director, Artangel

“Until I saw Pina in 1982 I hadn’t realised something existed that was such a bringing together of so many different images, feelings, emotions, art forms.

“I set about stalking her. I had to find a way of working with her, to understand how she was able to encapsulate so much about the human condition. Today, you can see her influence on British theatre, the way she integrated sound, light and design. She helped us see that dance didn’t need to be led by movement, just as theatre didn’t need to be led by text. I can’t see a chair on stage any more without thinking of how Pina used chairs.

“She spent most of her childhood under the table watching adults misbehave, laugh, cry in the aftermath of WW2, so her formative years were spent in her parents’ café in that period of time in Germany. And those two table legs almost form the proscenium arch. I feel almost everything she put on stage is a memory of the confusing way adults behave.

She knew how to create intimacy on a very large scale. Relationships between men and women are never resolved in her work — perhaps they are unresolvable. A lot of her sets are external landscapes full of danger and unpredictability — as a counterpoint to what goes on inside us.

To support bringing her work back to London, I put together the Pina Bausch Circle, including Rachel Whiteread, Richard Wilson, Fiona Shaw, Alan Rickman and Antony Gormley. When Rachel was doing her Turbine Hall piece at Tate Modern (called Embankment), she cited Pina’s influence — those monumental, epic, landscapes.”

GUILLERMO KUITCA

Artist

“I first saw Pina Bausch in Buenos Aires in 1980. The impact was comparable only to seeing Picasso or Bacon as a child. Later I visited Wuppertal, and gained a closer knowledge of the company. Coming back to Buenos Aires, the line I could draw between painting and theatre was no longer visible. The influence of the works seen in Wuppertal are evident in my paintings even today.

“Bausch once said that ‘in dance walking is enough’. This idea helped me conceive of the painting as a theatrical stage. I would like to think my tribute to her is rotating the weight of the drama from the stage into the audience. To conceive of the audience as a stage.”

PEDRO ALMODOVAR

Film director

“With a perennial cigarette in her hand, and her indescribable smile, Pina Bausch established a turning point in contemporary dance for the last quarter of the last century. Our friendship was intense and for ever. Pina was very feminine and very sensual. She was a constant source of pleasure. She sparked very diverse emotions in me and always inspired me.”

MATTHEW BOURNE

Director and choreographer

“Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring is the only true masterpiece to Stravinsky’s ubiquitous music, apart from Disney’s Fantasia, of course! Dancing on the earth itself seems so right, and the movement is raw, effortful and full of dread, performed with passion and heartbreaking intensity. Its simplicity means it will never be bettered.”

FIONA SHAW

Actor

“Her work does what great tragedy does, reminds us of the hopeless loneliness and precious beauty of existence. It makes theatre-makers aware of the possibility of ritual and repetition and the endless resource of the performer who, in these works, is often the source of the story as well as the protagonist. It reshaped dance from being the impossible extension of limbs to reach for meaning, to being in part the elevation of the commonplace to poetry. She takes us as we are, flawed, and insists on the beauty of our folly. She makes jokes in the face of Fate, laughs at history, and impresses the viewer with such profound compassion that one comes away with the gift of being seen and heard, even though we, the audience, did the looking.”

WIM WENDERS

Film director

“The way Pina gets to the core of what love and loss means in her piece Café Müller — I just don’t know a single film that has been able to come remotely close to that. In 40 minutes Pina showed me more about men and women than the history of cinema, without a single word.”

ALISTAIR SPALDING

Chief executive and artistic director, Sadler’s Wells

“Pina is like Stravinsky or Schoenberg, in that this is an absolute break, a time of change and schism. It opened up the form. Plus her sampling of music — having very short extracts of different music all through the pieces — is quite new. In a way it’s operatic — everything happening on stage together.

“When we first presented Pina at Sadler’s Wells, the theatre world flocked. The brick wall in Palermo is the most extraordinary theatrical event I can remember. People thought: ‘Yes we can include that in our vocabulary.’

“Her theme is men and women. She got down to the grit of it, and it’s not always a sympathetic or positive look at that relationship. I think that’s also something of her heritage — she placed the women at the forefront; the men are there but they feel slightly subservient. Even though they are sometimes cruel to the women, the women win through. They’re so glamorous and strong.

“When you talk to the company it’s clear this isn’t just a normal company relationship. It’s not a cult, but they got so close, they became a kind of family.

“The movement vocabulary came from Pina, but the scenarios came from a collaborative process where she asked the dancers questions.

“I think that’s why they are continuing so well. You’d never know she had passed away, because when she was alive the bond was so strong that they’re still devoted to her, they’re still in awe.

“I don’t want to get too dewy-eyed, but she was like angel, influencing people offstage and in life, too.”

TAMARA ROJO

Principal dancer, Royal Ballet

“Pina is theatrical marmite; you either love her or you hate her. I love her. The first time I saw Café Müller I felt violated, as if Pina had opened a window into my soul and was allowing everyone to see some of my deepest emotions and fears.

“Her work transcends description; it affects you on a deep emotional level, speaking to your spirit and defying logical analysis. Part dance, part theatre, part catharsis — always inspiring and affecting.

“Each piece is very specific to the dancer who created it and to the emotional impact she was trying to convey. She has not created a dance language or syllabus that other creators could follow. She is very much her own idiosyncratic self and all we can do is admire her works and hope they will be well taken care of.”

MICHAEL KEEGAN DOLAN

Artistic director, Fabulous Beast Theatre

“Pina opened a crack, a portal into a realm of possibilities. She wasn’t too bothered about narrative. I think her harshest critics are those who can’t release their mind from that partial way of viewing reality. And she celebrates women. It’s very important right now — and I think Pina was on it ahead of the posse. People try to convince me pointe shoes elevate the woman’s status, but that’s nonsense. They destroy big toe joints. Most female ballerinas don’t menstruate. The creative principle itself — which is the mother of all creativity — is being slowly suffocated. Pina was celebrating female power and femininity. No pointe shoes in her pieces, for sure.”

ALAN RICKMAN

Actor

“Pina Bausch pins you to your seat. It’s like she’s connected to your bloodstream or something. She knows about fears, fantasies and dream-life. It’s like meeting your own imagination.”

AGNES B

Fashion designer

“Her beautiful work … intelligence, sensuality, expression, despair, happiness, human spirit, beauty, baroque, modern, classic, unique … I miss her.”

ANTONY GORMLEY

Artist

"Pina Bausch's extraordinary intensity, vulnerability and determination has been an inspiration to me for the last 20 years. She was uncompromising in her belief in the body's ability to convey emotion. Her work allowed extreme exposure and great dignity. Her belief in dance as the most direct way in which life can express itself was absolute. Her work has been a moving example of the reinterpretation of the body from the inside. To have lived at the same time as this bright flame communicating in a language before language itself has been a privilege."

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch: World Cities 2012 is at Sadler’s Wells and the Barbican (sadlerswells.com and barbican.org.uk) until July 9. Guillermo Kuitca has an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, W1 (020 7287 2300, hauserwirth.com) until July 28.

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