★★★★✰ It's impossible to make coherent sense of a Bausch piece, whatever the source of her inspiration.
Tag - World Cities 2012
‘We do not describe a city’, Bausch is quoted as saying. ‘We describe the feelings we have picked up there.’
Pina Bausch’s particular brand of dance theatre owns many characteristics that are reiterated again and again throughout her work. The balance of these motifs changed over the years but the act of breaching the fourth wall is generally present.
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.
Pina Bausch and her designer, Peter Pabst, appear to have thrown in the Turkish towel when it came to the company’s evocation of Istanbul. Maybe they were overwhelmed by the overlay of cultures, past and present.
Ten Chi is like a musical composition mostly in a minor key – an accumulation of moments and motifs without a strong sense of purpose. In fact, much of the recorded music seems half-heard in sleep. There’s a pervasive feeling of melancholy, of a culture beyond comprehension except in crass tourist terms.
Once again, the performers of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch win over the audience with an apparently effortless ease.... Anna Wehsarg – a gorgeous statuesque redhead with legs that go on forever - can just walk on the stage, gazing into the audience and she has me captured.
Underpinning all of these familiar devices is the remarkable, intoxicating charisma of this extended family of performers, many of whom have been with the company for 30+ years. They continue to represent, with a comfortable faultless ease, Bausch’s unique cultural legacy...
I have had some of the best dreams ever while wide awake and watching Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. The company conjures imagery that no conscious mind seems capable of assembling.
With every Bausch work some of the images and sketches stick in the mind and linger as the particular flavour of the piece, and these will vary for every audience member. For me, it was how tough it is being a woman in Nur Du.
...the 30-strong company, which has one of the widest ranges in dancer age I've seen, is sensational to watch... For these cameos, and others, I'm glad I caught up with Viktor, but once is enough for a good while.