A piece by Pina Bausch. Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Festival Theatre. 9 Mar 2016
For 34 years we have waited to see the Pina Bausch company perform again in Adelaide. Thank you Arts Project Australia and the Adelaide Festival of Arts, for making it happen. The first time the Wuppertal ensemble performed in the Festival of 1982, we were agog. It was a very lateral and different face of contemporary dance: strange and beautiful gestural motions; dancers speaking aloud; and dancers moving like people in the street. On the spot, it redefined our perception of an art form. That performance was in Thebarton Theatre, playing Kontactof.
Now, minus its remarkable creator, Bausch, who died in 2009, it returns to play upon a vast expanse of pink carnations which carpet the mighty Festival Centre stage, row upon row on their long naked stalks, offset by the dead black of the back wall.
The first dancer who steps upon the stage seems diminutive. But the dancers don't dance into sight. They pick their way slowly and carefully, carrying chairs, and they sit down. Then, one by one, some make their way slowly offstage and into the aisles, select audience members, and escort them silently from the theatre.
The Bausch dancers are many. They are lithe and fit. And, they are diverse. Their ages reach into the 60s. They are tall and small. They are of many nationalities, including three Australians and even one from Adelaide who, having seen the company in 1982, was to run away and join the circus, so to speak, and live her professional life on its stage. Julie Shanahan’s place in the company now is outstanding insofar as she features in a games scene, towering aloft on the shoulders of another dancer, long skirts making her appear a giant. Thus, does she claim power in a scene of strange and tense play, a game of creeping statues which, in Bausch spirit, is edged with cruelty.
Nelken is very much about the unkindness of humanity, about cruelty and compassion, about the fact that groups are made up of individuals and that everyone in a crowd has a story.
Bausch has used the contrast between authority and the individual in the most dramatic way, dressing male dancers in dark suits and having a lead performer who, if anything, is like a Vladimir Putin. She has him confront the passing people and demand to see their passports, creating a relationship of intimidation and in one case, abject humiliation. And a hapless man must scamper four-legged among the flowers barking like a dog. There are real dogs, too; four sleek German Shepherds, once again representing the power of authority. They hint at wars in Europe, the Berlin Wall, and the Iron curtain
Bausch underscores these associations in costume and music. Her women wear long formal satin gowns of 30s style and the music leans to Mancini, Gershwin and Ellington . For much of the two hour performance, the cast wears loose little sunfrocks. Androgynous, they gambol through the carnations, rolling, rabbit hopping, chasing with the innocence of children. But authority is never far away. They are smacked and chased. The harshness of real life is waiting for them.
Individual dancers present vignettes. One girl, after spooning dirt from a bucket and tipping it over her head, comes to a state of howling tears, running in circles pursued by a man with a microphone. Between tears, she chastises herself for crying, like an autistic child's echolalia of parental reproach. Then there is the feeding of the orange, a dancer dutiful slurping and chewing into a microphone. It is not good, she says. The man feeding the girl, firmly cajoles her to just one more piece, bringing it to her mouth like an aeroplane, stuffing its hugeness in. She is left alone centre stage, chewing diligently. Endurance. Survival. Hope also lives in this surreal flowerscape.
Thematic is Gershwin's The Man I Love in which lyrics sung by Sophie Tucker are interpreted through sign language by a lone dancer. Love is the human dream. The song and the dream return at the show's end, somewhat battered as, by now, are the carnations. They have been trampled and rolled upon. They've even had towers of cardboard boxes piled upon them to cushion the falls of sinister besuited stuntmen. Dancers have dashed to and fro carrying the chairs upon which they sit to execute perfect symmetries of chorus-line choreography. Sometimes the chairs are upended.
Always the dancers are on the mark, in absolute tune with each other. They are supplicant. They are desperate. They are fighting back. Sometimes it is a frenzy, exhausting to behold. They speak out. The audience meets them. They are getting tired. One seeks the canteen. One has sore feet. One feels the need to prove that they are proper ballet dancers, after all. Bellowing hoarsely, he performs the great moves of classical ballet, never shutting up as he does so. Is that enough, he challenges.
Sign language is hallmark to the Bausch choreography and it returns triumphant at the production's denouement with the ensemble performing Bausch's elegant signature march, faces in those exquisitely complicit expressions, their arms repeating the signs for summer, winter, autumn and spring. With the 30s music and 30s glamour these ghosts of style from a grand era parade across the stage, cool eyes ever on the audience, the antithesis of the frenzies just moments before.
And thus, two wondrous strange hours are gone, leaving thoughts and images swarming through the mind. Dance genius has touched us again and the late Pina Baush never will die.
Samela Harris
When: 9 to 12 Mar
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
