Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
Knowing nothing of Pina Bausch and of the innovative Tanztheater school of modern dance that she helped to form in the 1970s, I picked up my clunky 3D glasses and headed into the cinema expecting – well, not expecting anything, perhaps a documentary of sorts.
Exactly 106 minutes and a large Pepsi later, I had learnt very little of Pina the woman, and even less of the culture and practice of dance she had inhabited and reigned over. Pina Bausch is dead, we learn. Pina Bausch was a dancer, and a brilliant and inspiring one, we find out. Pina Bausch set up a following, I gather. Other than these few facts, everything I know about Pina Bausch is lifted verbatim from Wikipedia; this is nowhere near a documentary, even further from a biopic – it is simply a celebration.
The piece is dotted with moments in which members of her dance company awkwardly sit facing the camera and smile or stare; over these portraits are their respective voices. Over the course of the film each will tell us something intimate, perhaps a phrase of Pina’s that stuck with them or something she did in their presence. “Why haven’t you visited me in my dreams, Pina?” one asks. However, these self-conscious and often maudlin talking heads aside, the rest of the time is spent moving us from dance to dance, in chronological order. The streets, factories, gardens and monorail of Wuppertal have never seemed as brilliant and alive as when Bausch’s choreography flows through the dancers and into them, the jumps between stage and location working brilliantly to highlight the strangeness and technical intricacy of these movements.
The director, Wim Wenders of Buena Vista Social Club fame, helps to frame the astoundingly versatile dance company with a backdrop, a living stage. As for Bausch’s choreography and the recreations of it, I can say nothing of any worth for those that already know about them. For those that do not, the vividness of the movement along with the emotional investment each dancer gives to their steps is brilliant. From the way that the company carry themselves it is obvious that those who have made this film adore Pina Bausch. They reveal to us – though they struggle to make much sense when they speak - her devotion to the theatre as a dancer. Even after her death the infective numinosity of Pina continues into their lives, their performance and into the audience. The marching line of dancers, each smiling, striding and playing out the change of the seasons with their hands in a sort of sign language, is a statement: there is life after Pina Bausch, but it carries on to her beat.
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