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.