The most prominent name in dance theater departed our world earlier this month, weeks before her planned trip to Cairo to create a new piece about Egypt.
Pina Bausch, the German dancer and choreographer who revolutionized dance theater, died at age 68 after serving the theater and dance world with treasures of choreography for 35 years.
Dancing since the age of 14, Bausch earned a grant to study at Juilliard School of Music in New York, where she briefly danced with the New American Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera. Her work began when she was appointed director and choreographer of the Tanztheater Wuppertal in Germany in 1973, which now bears her name.
Bausch created a unique signature in the world of dance theater, allowing her dancers to find their voices, to talk and sing and even interact directly with the audience.
Not only did she engage theatricality in dance, she liberated dance from the rigidity of the old schools of ballet and the egocentricity of modern dance.
Working collaboratively with her company, she constantly directed questions to the dancers who responded in movement or gestures creating work that was less about the individual and more about the relationships between individuals in a changing world. She often said, “I’m not interested in how people move, but what moves them.
Her early works, such as “Café Müller and “Kontakthof, focused on relationships between women and men, examining the social expectations and roles of each gender that often led to frustration because of the limitations of connection and the impossibility of genuine intimacy.
Pina Bausch’s choreography began to attract attention abroad thanks to a string of acclaimed performances at the World Theater Festival in Nancy, France, in 1977. This was the start of her flourishing international career, which put Wuppertal on the world dance maps, and made her pieces the hottest ticket in theater and dance festival worldwide.
As she established her name in the dance world, her work began to look more closely at social issues. Her later work focused on social consciousness, exploring interactions of people in society, in the models of the late 20th Century.
Among the visually arresting and thought-provoking moments in her work is of a family preparing dinner together. They gather around the table, eat, talk, share stories, and laugh as they enjoy their meal. A television set is rolled on stage and placed near the family. Slowly the conversation dies down, as each member of the family gradually turns to face the television. Carrying their plates in their hands, each automatically moves food from the plate to his/her mouth with eyes fixated on the flicker from the box.
Bausch’s simple and powerful image offers a strong commentary on the disintegration of familial ties under the pressure of modernity. The shift her dancers portray reveal how people become programmed by the images spewed from their television that reduces them to robots, losing their graceful agility, barely feeding themselves, and finding no joy in life. The warmth of family life is replaced by the cold, disconnected virtual world.
Bausch’s TanzTheater (dance theater) created a new language that continues to inspire dancers and choreographers. This language didn’t only materialize in the movements of her dancers and the stories their bodies told, it was also evident in her staging of the work, having her dancers move in mud, perform on leaves, or even slide in water. For her, dance was about theater, and Bausch’s theater offered the audience new insight into their personal and social relationships, as well as fresh ways to re-examine their connections to the natural elements, in distinct playfulness that made her work easily distinguishable.
Her opus was recognized worldwide; in 2007 she was awarded the Kyoto Prize – one of the top prizes in the art world – in recognition of her work in breaking down the boundaries between dance and theater, and pioneering a new direction for theatrical art. She was the first woman to receive this award.
Though the images she created circulated the globe, Bausch tended to avoid the limelight. Recently, her face became known to many people outside the dance world through her appearance in Pedro Almodóvar’s Oscar-winning film “Talk to Her, which pays tribute to her work.
In the last few years, Bausch developed her own brand of intra-national work. She would travel abroad, with her troupe and create a piece with local artists, usually about their culture, then take it on tour and bring it back to Wuppertal. Her most successful collaboration was with India. Her next trip was planned for Egypt this September.
Unfortunately, her Egypt project will never see the light, depriving Egyptian artists from working with the top contemporary choreographer.
Yet all is not lost. Her troupe, TanzTheater Wuppertal, is planning to carry her legacy and continue the tour. They will perform “Bamboo Blues and “Sacre at the Cairo Opera House on Oct. 3 and 4, offering Egyptian audiences a taste of the world of Pina Bausch whose work gave dance theater a new meaning and opened new doors of collaboration and interpretation for dancers and theater artists everywhere.
