★★★★✰ How do you find the soul of a city? It was a challenge that Pina Bausch and her company took on again and again with their World Cities series of tanztheater works – and "Masurca Fogo", made in 1998, must rank as one of the most successful attempts.
Tag - Regina Advento
The cast’s collective maturity serves the work well since the central theme of many of the 50 or so episodes concerns the passage of life; concentrating especially on memories of childhood and youth contrasting with images of old age.
‘We do not describe a city’, Bausch is quoted as saying. ‘We describe the feelings we have picked up there.’
Sometimes Água’s moving images are dizzyingly beautiful, undulating palm fronds echoing the women’s waving tresses; sometimes they seem reminders that civilisation is only skin deep; or that the untamed jungle is indifferent to human concerns.