Pina Bausch

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An atmosphere of improvisation based on small gestures is conjured up by the company led by Pina Bausch. Yet the internal structure of her work, which combines elasticity with firmness, endows the entire piece with cohesion. «A spontaneous, refreshingly natural quality pervades the show,» writes Jordi Coca, «thanks to the seemingly mistaken movements of the hands, the unexpected smiles, the instinctive moulding of garments to the body [...]. The episodes enacted by the dancers have all the imperfection of everyday gestures. Yet they are meaningful and lead us (by means of a collage, not a story or plot thread) to reconstruct a world which is not high-flown but made up of caresses that spark off quarrels, evocations of childhood that can be sweet or malicious, and verbal improvisation. Whenever an episode is slightly drawn out, taking on the form of a hypernaturalistic moment, it immediately becomes alien to what it represents and is transmuted, in the absence of any Zola-like continuous description, into a sort of objet trouvé. Nothing has a precedent in earlier situations, nothing fits the space where it occurs, and nothing yet to come will complete the information we already have about it.»

The German choreographer's output acquired these characteristics as early as 1973, when she took over as director of the Wuppertal dance theatre. Her training under Kurt Jooss and the three years and more she spent in New York in the early sixties were both of great consequence. Those were the days when American neo-Dadaism, along with happenings, the Fluxus group, Minimal and Action art, were striving to blur the dividing line between different art forms and to trigger the spectator's emotive and sensorial capacities above all else. «Abstract gestures, which were traditional in dance, are totally banished, while a certain use of techniques from the world of movies is introduced». For her Liceu debut Pina Bausch presents The Rites of Spring (first performed on 3 December 1975) and Café Müller (first performed on 20 May 1978), two mythical pieces from her company's repertory which are already part of the history of dance.

Café Müller
Music: Henry Purcell
Choreography: Pina Bausch
Scenery and Costumes: Rolf Borzik

The Rites of Spring
Music: Igor Stravinsky
Choreography: Pina Bausch
Scenery and Costumes: Rolf Borzik

The Rites of Spring [07:24]