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The Theatre of Pina Bausch. Hoghe PDF
The Theatre of Pina Bausch. Hoghe PDF
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Drama Review: TDR
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ftle teatre of tia gaucgr
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Arien
Two jokes; a dream. "A man came to the circus manager and asked him if he
needed a bird imitator. 'No,' answered the circus manager. Then the man flew away
through the window." This and a second joke are told twice-in the first and in the
last part-in Pina Bausch's Arien (Aries). "Berlin. A man asks a cabdriver: 'Can you
tell me how I can get to the Philharmonic?' The cabdriver answers. 'Sure, man, that's
very easy: practice, practice, practice."' "They practiced and could fly for two
hours," someone noted after an Arien performance. In Pina Bausch's Macbeth
paraphrase there is the same dream. "How will you live?" Lady Macduff asks her
son. "As the birds do." It is cited twice.
During rehearsals, Pina Bausch watches. She is very reticent with explanat
to the performers. "I don't want to take your thoughts away from you," she says
encourages individuals to have their own imagination, to be more like themselves,
dare uncommon ways of thinking. "Just dare to think in all directions." "Do w
you thought of doing." "Just try it out." Interruptions in the flow of rehearsing
seldom. Pina Bausch goes toward various individuals and starts talking to them
does this very softly. Her few verbal utterances very seldom reach those not direc
concerned. They refer to the individual she talks to and to their situation. The
not consist of general proposals or general theories. Asked by a dancer wheth
scene is meant to be with text or only with ambiance, she answers: "One has to try
out. I cannot tell theoretically."
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64 THE DRAMA REVIEW/T85
Kontakthof
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PINA BAUSCH 65
Kontakthof
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Kontakthof
departure somewhere, but where the whole thing is moving is developed in rehears-
als. It isn't planned-it just happens, through us all. The composition of the group
crucial to many things we've experienced, or crucial to something somebody oug
to rehearse." The point of departure constantly changes during the working process.
It grows, circles, gets larger, becomes questionable. Like the point of departure
her play Kontakthof (Contacting Square): "Tenderness. What is it? How does one
it? Where does it go? And how far does tenderness go at all? When isn't it
tenderness any more? Or is it still tenderness?"
Kontakthof exercises in tenderness, experiments in tenderness, quests for
tenderness. An old record: "Zieh' mich an dich, wir wollen Tango tanzen" ("Draw me
close to you, we want to dance the Tango"). Friendly smiling pairs stand opposite
each other and touch each other. A man takes the hand of a woman and bends her
fingers backward. A woman approaches a man and bites his ear. One pinche
partner underneath the arms, closes his eyes, draws out a single hair, takes away h
chair, and they leave the stage arm in arm. Later the touches are continued.
after the frontier has actually been crossed does one note with surprise that the
gestures of advance have become something different. Tender gestures become
blows. The transitions are fluid. At the end of the play men touch a woman (Meryl
Tankard). They cover her body with touches. Hands stroke across hair, eyes, brow,
mouth, nose, chin, ears, neck, arms, legs, breast, stomach, back-until the woman
collapses underneath what is understood (by men) as "tenderness."
Sometimes something like tenderness seems possible only from afar. One of
the most tender Kontakthof scenes shows a pair separated by a wide distance. A
man and a woman (Gary Austin Crocker and Viviene Newport) sit at the two opposite
ends of the big empty room furnished only with simple wooden chairs. They smile
timidly at the distant partner. Bashfully they take off single pieces of clothing. They
look at each other shyly. Slowly they undress before and offer, as the saying goes,
"bare spots" to one another. Across the protective space they get very close to each
other; the outward distance remains the same.
In another part of the performance there is a similar situation with a far less
careful approach. Again women and men find themselves opposite each other. This
time they are in groups, in a situation reminiscent of a ballroom-dancing lesson. The
men cross the big Kontakthof square with their chairs. Loudly and with demanding
gestures, they approach the women waiting with their backs to the wall. They con-
quer the distance between them. They reach out impatiently for the women, who try
to avoid them in vain. But they cannot get hold of the females shrinking back from
their possessive touch.
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PINA BAUSCH 67
Kontakthof
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68 THE DRAMA REVIEW/T85
Arien
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PINA BAUSCH 69
dividuals that end with sudden splashes into the water-this dance ends very sud-
denly. A loud sound from the outside ends it-and the self-inquiry that is as quiet as
it is utopian. The dancers open their eyes. A moment of alarm, of insecurity, the trou-
ble of finding again the old securities, of winning some distance from oneself and of
finding one's way in the strange thing called reality, which hardly permits any (self-)
exploration, interrupts the departure.
Words that keep one from getting lost, sentences one can cling to-Pina
Bausch's work denies such safety-anchors. On the long-crossed frontier between
drama and ballet, spoken theatre and musical theatre, it does not want to hand out
texts one can read afterward. In her performances, words are something slight,
fragmentary, and blurred. Only very seldom do they serve communication or a
mutual understanding. Only in exceptional cases do they reach other humans.
"Meine Ruh ist hin, mein Herz ist schwer; ich finde sie nimmer und nimmer." ("My
calmness is gone, my heart is heavy; I do not find it ever again"; part of the Gretchen
monolog from Goethe's Faust) recites a girl (Anne Martin) sitting in the water
downstage, near the footlights. She is as difficult to understand as the turned-on
pair reading laughingly from a book about the love life of insects. Somehow and
unspectacularly, these utterances stop-as do many other things in this theatre of
fragments, of sections.
Photographs-substitute pictures that are no substitute for an unlived
life-emerge again in Arien. Right at the beginning a tense holiday-making couple
asks to be photographed, to be recorded in a relaxed attitude. Their wish is fulfilled.
Jan Minarik photographs them jumping. Later he runs again through the scene with
tripod and cameras, tries to look for contact and to make pictures. He aims the lens
at singles, pairs, groups, and at last at himself. He photographs himself with a self-
timer. He joins groups that are strange to him (and stay strange to him), releases the
self-timer, and has a "real" group picture-proof of something that does not exist.
Arien
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Arien
Close to the footlights, a row of chairs is set up. With tired, serious faces, the
women walk toward it. Some are in such a state of sadness that they seem to be on
the way to an execution, probably their own. Gradually they sit down on the chairs.
They give themselves up to the men. To the sounds of Mozart's "Little Night Music",
they are changed by the men. They are dressed in old clothes, colorful wraps, pastel-
shaded girly dresses. Their faces are painted in gaudy colors. They are handed
bizarre props-until nothing reminds one of what they were. To many this makeup
and dressing scene seemed to be a clear reference by Pina Bausch to the situation
of women who are forced into certain stereotypes, are adapted to the dominant male
imaginations and robbed of their identity by men, so that they are only wrapped-up
objects in the end. The point of departure, reminds Pina Bausch, was entirely dif-
ferent. "It was connected in a way with the fact of these many unhappy girls being
around. We decided to have them painted because we thought: 'Perhaps the paint-
ing will help them to get happy again.'"
One of the "impossible" (love-) stories told in Arien is between a woman
(Josephine Ann Endicott) and a hippopotamus. The hippo was a shy man in a gray
suit (Hans Dieter Knebel). That a human can take the part of a hippopotamus, that a
monster is human, and that the relationship between a man and a woman is
sometimes just as impossible as a relationship between a human and a hip-
popotamus can be seen in Arien and other performances by Pina Bausch. When the
woman, after a glance in the mirror, sees the hippopotamus approaching her for the
first time, she laughs very loudly and forcedly-and shies away from the impossible
at first. Slowly and clumsily, the sensitive pachyderm moves back into the darkness
of the stage, moves back into the distance and gropes carefully forward again later.
The impossible is only one possibility among others-a possibility that remains,
even when one tries to fight against it.
The difficulties of an often desperately attempted togetherness-her perfor-
mances do not hide them. They show pairs attracting and repulsing each other, clinging
together, and not fitting one another. One of them is Beatrice Libanoti and Lutz
Forster in Arien. When the very big blond man carries the very small black-haired
woman stiffly across the stage, lifts her up to himself and kisses her mouth, her feet
reach just about to his knees. She is swept off and cannot stand on her own feet.
When her counterpart lets go, she slides down along him and sinks into the water at
his feet.
Men and women constituting two groups stand opposite each other and shout
admonitions on how to move heads, shoulders, arms and legs. They work
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Arien
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Pina Bausch, Some Data
Born 1940 in Solingen, a small the Folkwang Ballet; she becomes
town between Cologne and Wuppertal. director in 1969. Four years later she
First contacts with theatre people are becomes director of the ballet theatre
in her parents' small restaurant. At 15 of Wuppertaler Buhnen (Wuppertal
she begins to study dance at the Folk- Stages). After her dancing soiree Fritz
wangschule, Essen; director Kurt in Wuppertal, she choreographs
Jooss. 1959: finals in stage-dancing, Iphigenie Auf Tauris (Iphigenia in
classical and modern, and pedagogical Tauris), a dance-opera with music by
examination; stipend from the German Gluck; Adagio-Funf Lieder Von
-Academic Exchange (DAAD) for further Gustav Mahler (Adagio, Five Songs for
studies in the USA. Special student at Gustav Mahler); and Ich
the Juilliard School of Music, New Bring Dich Um Die Ecke (I Lay You
York: at the same time, member of theDown Under), a ballet in which she lets
Dance Company of Paul Sanasardo and
the dancers sing old hit-tunes, used by
Donya Feuer. 1961: engagements with
her for the first time. 1975: she realizes
the New American Ballet and at the Orpheus Und Eurydike (Orpheus and
Metropolitan Opera, New York. Euridice), a dance-opera with music by
1962: returns to Germany, where she
Gluck; and Fruhlingsopfer (the Rites of
becomes soloist of the newly founded Spring), three ballets by Pina Bausch to
Folkwang Ballet Company. Since 1968 the music of Stravinsky. With Die Sie-
her choreography, in the repertory of ben Todsunden (The Seven Deadly
themselves up to a more and more aggressive tone, until the words arrive at the
other side like lashes of a whip. Even when Pina Bausch shows such "confrontation-
situations" again and again-situations where the sexes oppose each other like
adversaries on a battlefield, react hurt and hurting to one another, and try to assert
themselves-she does not want to judge these fights, and she does not want to con-
demn. "Afterward I notice sometimes: Somehow I am always a kind of 'counsel for
the defense.' I always have the position of the defender. Somehow at these points,
where one ordinarily says, 'This is uncomfortable' or 'This isn't right,' or whatever-
there I try to understand somehow why it is as it is. And in this instant I am a
defender, of course, when I try to understand how it happens, after all, that people
behave in a certain way."
Pina Bausch addresses herself and her theatre to the doubts and insecurities,
to the corners and edges one can run into, opening up wounds. "I'd never smooth
that over" -for instance, for the sake of some "message." "I couldn't do it," she
believes. Her plays pose questions. Answers stay open. To give them "would be con-
ceited." "I just can't say: 'That's how it goes,'" declares Bausch. "I am watching
myself. I'm just as lost as all the others."
Her work is far more open than it is interpreted by some observers. Pina
Bausch: "I never ever thought: 'That's how it is'." She shuns unequivocal interpre-
tations. "I often thought of something completely different, meant something dif-
ferent-but not only that, yQu see." She does not want her very clear and often
repeated pictures to be placed into certain pigeon holes. If, for example, in her pro-
ductions women are very often treated like dolls, this-according to her-can be
seen in various ways. "Take, for instance, the perfomance Renate Wandert Aus
(Renate Emigrates). There you have those men that put the girls somewhere and
then embrace them. You can think lots of things about it-not only that there is a
man who simply grabs a woman, carries her away and then embraces her. You can
think that a man wishes for a situation where a girl behaves herself quietly. You can
see it like this or like that. It just depends on the way you watch. But the single-
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Sins)-music by Weill, texts by Der Hand Und Fuhrt Sie In Das
Brecht-she leaves the old forms, for Schloss, Die Ande Ren Folgen (He
the time being, definitely behind andTakes Her by the Hand and Leads Her
moves assuredly between ballet, to The Castle; the Others Follow).
drama and show business; she works Afterward in Wuppertal the short play,
with dancers, singers, actors. From Cafe Mueller (The Coffee Shop
now on her work seems to be a single Mueller), with music by Purcell, and
work-in-progress. 1977: Blaubart-Beim Kontakthof where, amongst others,
Anhoeren Einer Tonbandaufnahme Von music by Charles Chaplin, Anton
Bela Bartoks Oper "Herzog Blaubarts Karas, Jean Sibelius and German hits
Burg" (Bluebeard-While Listening from to the 1930s are used. Her latest
a Tape Recording of Bela Bart6k's work: Arien, developed like the
Opera Count Bluebeard's Castle); preceding plays only during rehearsal
Komm Tanz Mit Mir (Come Dance with (music: amongst others Beethoven,
Me), making use of old songs; Renate Mozart and old Italian arias sung by
Wandert Aus (Renate Emigrates), an Benjamino Gigli). In all productions
opera by Pina Bausch with popular cooperation with Rolf Borzik (stage,
songs and perennial favorites. At the costume, director of makeup, photog-
Bochum Playhouse (Schauspielhaus raphy, video). Many performances and
Bochum) she directs, as a guest, her tours inside and outside the Federal
Macbeth paraphrase: Er Nimmt Sie Bei Republic.
stranded thinking that they interpret into it simply isn't right." Because: "You can
always watch the other way."
The possibility of watching the other way can be followed through very clearly
in and with her performances-not least through the element of repeating single ac-
tions that is often used by her. A Kontakthof scene, for instance, is once played in
light clothes and once in dark clothes. Or the same pictures are realized within dif-
ferent constellations. Actions, carried out before by men, are repeated in another
way by women. Thus the Kontakthof scene of the woman stroked down to the floor
by men reminds one of a scene from Blaubart (Bluebeard). There a man is surrounded
only by women grouping around him and touching him, smothering him with strokes
and leaving him as lifeless as the woman that could not be reached by the so-called
tenderness.
In the theatre of Pina Bausch one can experience many ways of look
becoming aware of one's subjective way of watching humans, relations, sit
and one can note that there are many different ways of seeing something with
self as well as within others. Take, for instance, the nursery games and t
games cited on stage. At first, undertakings like Die Reise Nach Jerusalem (Jou
to Jerusalem) or Kommando Pimperle (Commando Pimperle) seem to be ver
and hard, reminiscent of ruthless gang-fights and "you're out" situations.
performances, the same games seem much less belligerent and injuri
oriented to competitive behavior. They seem rather like shared experiment
ple trying to pass the time somehow while perhaps trying to regain part o
long past, perhaps part of their childhood.
If one tries to talk to Pina Bausch about the "difference" of her theat
answers, "It certainly has something to do with myself-with the fact of me be
woman. But in the end I can't judge it, and I don't have to." A theoretical analy
female esthetics is not her concern. And with feministic argumentation she ha
ficulties, she confesses. "'Feminism'-perhaps because it has become such a
fashionable word-and I retreat into my snail-shell. Perhaps also because they very
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Kontakthof
often draw such a funny borderline there that I don't really like. Sometimes it sou
like 'against each other' instead of 'together.'"
"The human being is the model," says Pina Bausch when asked about models
for her work. She says it as if convinced, unemphatically, without demonstrative
gestures, without big explanations-with the same simplicity that determines her
performances, a simplicity that has nothing to do with simplification. Pina Bausch
sees and shows people in their multiplicity and their inconsistency, with or without
masks. In Arien, for instance, Jan Minarik takes away the paint from the theatre
characters in the end. While the men and women of the ensemble walk along the
downstage footlight edge and stroke their partners across the back or play with their
hands, he frees them from the colored varnish, from the painted masks. With the
uninhibited view of their faces, the meeting with and between humans becomes
possible again.
Raimund Hoghe lives in Dusseldorf, West Germany and writes about theatre, art and social
themes for Theater heute, Die Zeit and various radio stations.
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