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.