Schauspielhaus Wuppertal

On July 1st local time I heard about the much too early death of Pina Bausch. My first "encounter with Pina" was in 1984, when I saw the pieces "Cafe Muller", "Bluebeard" and "The Rite of Spring" at New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Totally captivated by the fascination of her Tanztheater Wuppertal, I made sure to catch more or less all performances in Japan since the troupe visited the country for the first time in 1986. I would actually say that it was thanks to Pina Bausch that I became the huge fan of contemporary dance that I am today.

I will never forget the striking impression that I got at BAM. As the company name suggests, Pina combined elements of dance and theatre, and she did that in a way it had never been done before. In "Cafe Muller", tables and chairs lined up on the stage, and while the female dancers stagger about, the male dancers avoid collisions and carry them away. Pina’s parents used to run a cafe-restaurant, and as a little child Pina liked to hide under the tables and listen to people’s talks about the "histoires cruelles des grandes personnes." She once talked about how she saw "all kinds of people and all kinds of strange things happening (Il y avait tant de gens et il se passait tant de choses estranges)." (Le Monde online, 7/1) Without a doubt, those experiences were where she got the inspiration for her pieces.

I remember how the late Susan Sontag and her friends were sitting right behind me in the audience. For some strange reason I ended up on the crew bus after the show, and had the precious opportunity to meet Pina herself and say (or better, stutter) hello. Reviews were divided into positive and negative criticism, the latter by the likes of dance critic Arlene Croce. "She keeps referring us to the act of brutality or humiliation — to the pornography of pain", she wrote, and called her art "theatre of dejection".

Critic Asada Akira writes in his eulogy, "The life of Pina Bausch, who developed her own unique 'tanztheater' out of the legacy of German expressionist dance, ended on June 30 at the age of 68. […] But rather than taking the pre-war Ausdruckstanz she succeeded as it was, and using it as a vehicle for expressing her own emotions through body movement, she actually did it just the other way round. […] One could say that she reversed modern expressionism, and turned into the best possible form of postmodern performance art." (Asahi Shimbun, 7/7)

That postmodern form of expression was taken over by countless artists of following generations. Thinking back to 1984, New York-based dance critic and choreographer Deborah Jowitt remembers, "Whether you loved Bausch’s work or hated it, you wouldn't dream of not going to see it. And many young New York choreographers, schooled in Merce Cunningham’s the-movement-is-the-meaning principles, were both impressed and excited." (Village Voice online, 7/1)

According to New York Times writer Daniel J. Wakin, "Her influence is clear in the work of European choreographers like Jan Fabre, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Sasha Waltz and Alain Platel. Her work has also been a major influence on American contemporary-dance choreographers who question the boundaries between theater and dance."（New York Times online, 7/1）The above-mentioned Le Monde online published comments by various personalities not only from theatre and dance circles, but also by Zingaro leader Bartabas, and the late Federico Fellini. In the realm of film, her beautiful appearance in Pedro Almodovar’s "Talk to Her (Hable con ella)" is absolutely unforgettable.

Main entrance of the Schauspielhaus Wuppertal (both photos taken on July 3)

Pina developed her crossover style under Kurt Joos at the Folkwang Academy in Essen, Germany. She was only 14 when she entered the Academy, and the fact that she graduated with top honors at the age of 18 shows just what kind of a wunderkind she was. It is quite interesting to hear her speak reminiscently about the Academy later in her life.

"At this time at the Folkwang, all the arts were together, it was not just the performing arts like music or acting or mime or dance, but there were also painters, sculptors, designers, photographer. If you just went to a little ballet school, the experience would have been entirely different." (From an interview with the "Guardian" in 2002, taken from Guardian online, 7/1)

Deborah Jowitt writes in her article, "Her collage structures derive less from the art world than from revues and vaudeville turns." The origins of the Tanztheater Wuppertal are in fact to seek in the "big people’s cruel stories" back home in the cafe, as well as in the environment of the Academy where "all the arts were together", and in the world of popular drama. These places also play crucial roles in the development of her unique working style, as Pina used to model pieces around answers from her dancers on questions about their experiences in daily life.

I refrain from using stereotyped expressions that people tend o use in cases such as that of Pina Bausch’s death. She has sown the seeds and helped cultivate her own "fusion of dance and theatre", and as a matter of cat, it is bearing fruit all around the world. However, if environments as rich as described above are disappearing, it isn't even desirable that someone new comes and takes over the legacy of Pina Bausch. In this case, we will have to mourn not only the loss of an extraordinary artist, but the end of an era.

A memorial service will take place at the Opernhaus in Wuppertal on the 4th of September.