Interview with Pina Bausch's Dancers

This is a really cool website that has 4 different interviews with dancers that have worked with Pina Bausch.

http://vulgo.ie/features/exclusive-pina-bausch-collaborators-chat-with-vulgo/

Events

It is rather hard to say what world events influenced Pina Bausch to generate movement and create many of her elaborate productions. Pina focused on getting the people’s opinion what was happening in the world and she asked her dancers to embody their own opinions of the topics that she addressed in her movement.

Much of Pina Bausch later work does focus on love and relationships; however in her earlier work she created many productions that questioned socio-political topics that affected her on a personal level. When Pina Bausch moved back to Germany, after attending Julliards, the country was still divided inn to East and West Germany. In 1989 on November 9th, the Berlin Wall was opened ending the 23 year division of the country. These are some major events that happened in Germany, while Pina Bausch was living there. Many of her productions are inspired by other countries that the conflicts that reside in them. For example in her production of Chili, Pina Bausch was addressing current events that were affecting some of her dancers from South America.

Why Pina Bausch is Important to Me

I chose Pina Bausch as the choreographer I was interested in studying because I know that she required her dancers to take ownership of their experiences and opinions. The first piece of choreography that I saw by Pina Bausch was le Sacre de primtemps, which was a production that called for the dancers to dance on peat that covered the stage. The movement was driving and desperate to the point where I found myself emotionally connecting to the struggle that the dancer was going through on stage. After investigating more about Pina Bausch’s process of generating movement and inspiration for the content of her movement, I realized that most of the time the inspiration stemmed from socio-political ideas or issues that were occurring to her dancers.

As a dancer, I found that Pina Bausch was giving her dancers a responsibility that many other dancers never knew about. Pina Bausch’s dancers could not be blind to what was happening in the world and they always had to evaluate what their opinion of feelings were, directed towards a specific topic. Not many people challenge themselves to think about how the issues and topic in the world affect them even though they are not in the same time zone or country. Pina Bausch had the gift to ask the audience, through movement, questions that were personal and global. She forced the audience to see the opinions of the artists on stage and in the end the audience began to question their experiences and opinion of the production that they just attend.
Pina Bausch made people think and feel by purely looking at movement. Her movement vocabulary was simple and repetitive enough for the audience to decode the secret questions in locked in the choreography. She made everyone take responsibility for who they were and what their life stood for. As a dancer for Pina Bausch, there is no way that you could not change after dancing for her. She made her dancers move through a different light that made her movement more real and sensible for the audience.

Influences and Collaborations

The major influence that impacted Pina Bausch was the leaders of the German Expressionist movement. Kurt Jooss and Rudolf von Laban were the two main focuses that shaped how Pina Bausch created her production. Pina Bausch produced performance that was considered “dance theatre” which was original created by Rudolf von Laban. Pina Bausch first met Kurt Jooss when she started dancing at the Flokwangenschule in Essen, German. At the time Kurt Jooss was the school’s director and was Pina Bausch first dance teacher. After graduating from the Folkswangenschule, Pina Bausch moved to New York City and attended Julliards on a scholarship. There she was taught by Anthony Tudors, Jose Limon, and Paul Taylor. She danced for Anthony Tudor’s ballet company when she was living in New York City. After graduating Julliards, Pina Bausch moved back to Germany to dance for Folkswangen Taz Theatre. Kurt Jooss was the director of the dance company at the time and took Pina under his wing. In a few years following, Pina Bausch began to choreograph on the company and became the artistic director of the Folkswangen Tanz Theatre. There are not many multi-disciplinary collaborations that Pina Bausch took part in. She required her dancers to be able to dance, sing, and act so there was no need to hire singers and actors. Her sets, when they were elaborate, were designed by Pina Bausch’s late husband Rolf Borzik.

Interview with dancers from Wuppertal Opera

Sorry that it is in German, but if you need a translation just let me know.

Le Sacre de printemps

2012 Cultural Olympiad

Pina Bausch dance cycle to be staged as part of 2012 Cultural Olympiad
Barbican and Sadler's Wells collaborate on ambitious staging of the choreographer's 10 works inspired by cities

Mark Brown
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 March 2011 18.23 GMT
Article history

Bamboo Blues, part of Pina Bausch’s season of works to be shown before the London 2012 Olympics. Photograph: Angelos Giotopoulos
One of the final projects that the choreographer Pina Bausch, who died in 2009, was involved in was her most ambitious: an unprecedented season of 10 back-to-back works created as she responded to cities and countries that she visited throughout her long career. The series will be performed in London before the Olympics.

In the first collaboration between Sadler's Wells and the Barbican, the works will be staged in June and July 2012 as a highlight of the Cultural Olympiad. In the world of contemporary dance this is as big as it gets. It is a huge endeavour and something of a logistical nightmare, but Bausch's death has proved a spur to making sure it happens.

Alistair Spalding, the chief executive and artistic director of Sadler's Wells, said: "Both we and the company have used it as a motivator. We've been absolutely determined to make this season happen because, in our eyes, it was almost like it was her last wish."

Spalding said that Bausch was always top of the list when 2012 plans were being discussed. "It was clear to me that if we were going to do anything around the Olympics, then Pina should be involved."

Bausch was a titan in the world of dance, as important as Stravinsky was to music, said Spalding. She became the director of Tanztheater Wuppertal in 1973 and was one of the most influential choreographers of the last century. "She introduced a new way of thinking about dance, a new language, and did things on stage which no one had ever attempted," said Spalding.

Tanztheater Wuppertal's co-artistic director Robert Sturm said the company would soon prepare for what will be a hugely demanding cycle of performances. "It is very exciting, it is a wonderful possibility for both sides – for us to honour Pina and show so many pieces, and for audiences of course. It is a very special thing."

All the pieces are very different. Essentially travelogues, the works were created when Bausch was invited to visit and stay in 10 global locations – in India, Brazil, Palermo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Budapest, Istanbul, Santiago, Rome and Japan – between 1986 and 2009. Seven of the works have not been seen in the UK.

Spalding said: "We're covering quite a long period of creativity during which Pina changed her focus, so there are very stormy, theatrical works and towards the end there's more of a focus on pure dance. People will be able to see a progression in what Pina did."

The idea emerged from a meeting between Bausch and her designer, Peter Pabst, Spalding and Michael Morris, who has produced all of her works in the UK.

"It was the last thing we planned with her and she was very passionate about it," said Morris. "It was something I don't think she ever allowed herself to dream of; it's never been done before. It is a big challenge for the company."

The performances will take place from 6 June to 9 July. As one takes place, the crew will be installing the complex and monumental sets designed by Pabst in the other venue, including the six-metre-high hill of red silk flowers needed for Der Fensterputzer (Hong Kong) and the entirely bricked up stage for Palermo, Palermo.

The season will be the first collaboration between the two London venues – with four performances at the Barbican and six at Sadler's Wells – which are usually friendly rivals. "Hopefully we will continue to work together in the future," said Spalding.

The profile of Bausch outside her hugely loyal fanbase, meanwhile, is likely to widen with the release in April of Wim Wenders's 3D documentary homage to the choreographer, which premiered last month at the Berlin film festival.

Pina Bausch's Influences

Many of Pina Bausch influences comes from the people that she trained with. Kurt Jooss was a leader in the German Expressionism movement for dance. We was directing the Folkwang Schule in Essen, Germany when Pina Bausch was studying there as a young girl. When she received a scholarship to Julliard in New York, she was influenced by many of her ballet masters. Her teachers a Julliard consisted of Jose Limon, Paul Taylor, Antony Tudor, and Paul Sanasardo. While in New York, she performed for Antony Tudor’s dance company called The Metropolitan Opera Ballet. One of the major influential people That Pina Bausch did not work with, however, was Rudolf von Laban. He was the creator of the performance style “dance theater” and all of Pina Bausch’s work is based off of this performance idea. These people were the major influences that help guide Pina Bausch to understand what movement and performance represented to her and gave her the tools that she need to execute the intentions of her choreography.

Cafe Mueller

Carnations (1983) Video

Le Sacre de printemps (1975)

"The women stand hunched and shuddery, near naked in flimsy beige shifts which they draw up with childish, ungainly immodesty. They are gripped by terror because they know one of them will be the sacrificial victim to mark the end of winter - the Chosen One who dances to the death. The red dress she will wear is passed among them, a rag both fearful and fascinating. They huddle together for comfort, then disintegrate into panic-stricken scurries as destiny stirs under the surface. And when a woman is chosen (Aurelie Dupont) by the male leader, the music briefly unleashes the colossal power of its drums, like the cracking of the Russian ice in spring. It signals the release of pent-up sexual longing, the men and women flying like shards into each other's arms.
What makes Bausch's Rite so extraordinary is the balance between visceral realism and intervals of vivid, orchestrated geometry: the phalanxes of unison dance, the circle of dancers revolving with stately vastness to the music slow's section, like the cycle of the seasons, like life. And then there are Bausch's emotional images: the crowd waiting before the victim like spectators at a bullfight; the girl's frozen terror as she is forced to walk by the man, who pushes her, half holding her up, her feet resisting hopelessly against the loose soil."

Nadine Meisner
The Times (London)
18 June 1997

Arien (1985)

"Realism as processed in Miss Bausch's artistic blender has interesting results. The idea of filling a stage surface with water seems like a gimmick. But by the end, we are so used to dancers sloshing through the water, getting their evening gowns wet, even gliding on a rubber raft or holding a party in this huge puddle, that we barely take notice of the fact that they are completely drenched at the end.
Like previous Bausch pieces seen here, the decor - again by Rolf Borzik - creates a mood-setting and metaphorical environment. Water has symbolism of different kinds. But here it is used not so much as an aquatic universe as a physical property to affect the dancers' movements and how we perceive them.
Thus after the dancers play children's games of various sorts and the men dress up the women in fantastic make-believe costumes, the inner truth of a person is blatantly revealed when one of the women with a painted face rushes under a downpour - the red makeup streams down her face and onto her chest."

Anna Kisselgoff
The New York Times
3 October 1985

Carnations (1983)

"For all its humor (and there is a considerable dose), "Carnations" asks how love is possible in the world in which we live. The occasional sight of two German shepherds on patrol with their trainers at the rear of the stage shows Miss Bausch at her most metaphorically direct. The motif of the world as police state is never lost. Repeatedly, the performers are asked to show their passports by a ubiquitous master of ceremonies-secret police official. Add four professional stuntmen who don't have to strain to look thuggish and whose duties, among other things, include jumping down from two high scaffolds, and a deliberately disquieting element comes into play. The sinister and the mellow constantly mesh."

Anna Kisselgoff
The New York Times
7 July 1988

Biography

Pina Bausch was born July 24, 1940 in Solingen, Germany.  Her parents August and Anita Bausch, owners of a café, named her Phillippine and she was the third child in the family.    In 1955, at the age of 14, Pina started her dance training at the Folkwangschule in Essen, Germany.  The director of the school was Kurt Jooss, who was a major influence in the German Expressionist dance movement.  In 1958 Pina Bausch graduated from folkwangschule and continued her studies at Julliard in New York City.  She was awarded a scholarship for her education at Julliard.  While there her teachers consisted of jose Limon, Antony Tudor, Paul Sanasardo, and Paul Taylor.  In New York, she danced in the Paul Sanasardo and Donya Feuer Dance Company, New American Ballet, and Metropolitan Opera Ballet that was being directed by Antony Tudor.  In 1962 Pina Bausch joined the Folkwang Ballett Company, that was directed by Kurt Jooss, a soloist and an assistant to Kurt Jooss.  The first time Pina choreographed for the Folkwang Ballett was in 1968.  In 1969 she succeeded Kurt Jooss and began the artistic director of the Folkwang Ballet Company.  In 1973 she became the artistic director of the Wuppertal Opera Ballet that was later named the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.  During the time that Pina Bausch was in direction of the Tanztheater Wuppertal, she choreographed her most extravagant works that made her a profound choreographer during her time.  For example; Le Sacre du printemps(1975) was choreography that had the dancer perform on a stage covered in dirt, Carnations(1983) was a production that called for the stage to be completely covered in silk carnations, and Arien(1985) was a performance that asked for the dancers move in ankle-deep water on the stage.  In 1980 her husband Rolf Borzik died of leukemia.  He was the primary set and costume designer for Pina Bausch.  In 1981 she met her life companion Ronald Kay, which later she had her son Rolf with.  Pina Bausch died June 30, 2009, five days after she received her diagnosis of an unstated cancer.

Much of Pina Bausch’s choreography in her early life was very controversial and emotion based movement, compared to her later work that was more romantic based.  In the early 2000’s Pina received many awards from several different theaters and foundations.  She was a major contributor to the expansion of the genre tanztheater or dance-theater that was originally created by Rudolf von Laban in the 1920’s.  Dance-theater is movement that is based on the complete freedom and removal of ballet vocabulary and creation of movement from the dancer’s emotional expression.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtqrqjERhkQ

  “I’m not interested in how people move; I’m interested in what makes them move.” ~Pina Bausch