1980: A PIECE BY PINA BAUSCH (Avgi newspaper, 2001)

1980: A PIECE BY PINA BAUSCH One of the most eagerly awaited events in the calendar of the Athens Festival, was the performance by the Pina Bausch group “Dancetheatre of Wuppertal” who presented “1980: A piece by Pina Bausch” (8 & 9 July). The capacity audience who attended Herod Atticus Theatre, unusual numbers for such a spectacle, was divided between fierce critics of “1980” and in its fanatical supporters. The increased numbers of spectators and the two polarised reactions to the work can be explained to a whole host of reasons, one of which must be the misunderstanding about the genre which is internationally known as “Tanztheater” and with Bausch’s work in particular. “Tanztheater” is the creation of a generation of choreographers who were born during the second world war; through their works, they restored the bonds with the innovative and pioneering artists of the years between the wars. Pina Bausch, Reinhild Hoffmann, Hans Kresnik, Suzanne Linke, Gerhard Bonner developed, modified, reorganised and transformed many aspects of the performances that were staged by the choreographers of the “Ausdruckstanz” (expressionist dance) in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Choreographers and dancers, some of whom left for England or the USA and some remained, were forgotten after the war as remnants of a suspect era which should not be talked about in Adenauer’s years. This is the time during which the German society follows and promotes the “ballet without memory” and marginalizes modern dance. The experimentations of Rudolf Laban, the feminist subversions of Mary Wigman or the caustic social comments of Kurt Jooss (equal to a paint by Gross or Kirchner) were unwelcome. The first two artists along with Gret Palluca and Harald Kreuzberg had choreographed the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in 1936 (there are no films of Laban’s in the German archives even today). The naked bodies, the vision of a new freedom intertwined with a move to return to nature, the idealised artists’ communities such as Monte Verità near Asconna, the experiments with large groups of people (“Bewegungschore”), the satisfaction of a tendency to flight in the recall of an archaic and traditional relationship between Germans and nature, became semiotic references of a past that should be condemned and consigned to oblivion. Kurt Jooss, the most socially conscious of the representatives of the AusdrucksTanz, returns to Essen in 1949 to form the FolkwangSchule which exists to date. This is the school which produced most of the artists of the TanzTheater; one of them is Pina Bausch. In lay terms, Dancetheatre is a type of a dance spectacle in which speech-narration- and music are interlinked according to the model of the Chorus, or rather the renaissance models, echoes of which were used in a modified form later to serve revivals and viewpoints about ancient drama. Therefore, speech is considered as the core feature which accompanies and protects the flow and logical progress of the dance. Outside Greece, there have occurred some very significant differentiations in the use and function of the movement, the music and of course speech and give Dancetheatre its main characteristics. These are the denial of realism, often through marginally truthful images, and the dissolution of the linearity of the narrative. At first glance, the simplification of the move motifs, especially during the first period of the Dancetheatre until the end of the ‘80s and the usage of daily movements (walking, sitting, waving, hugging and so on) gives a false sense of nothing much going on. The words, spoken at certain important sections of the performance, articulated correctly and carefully, in context with the action as well as the assumed character of the person who speaks the phrases or the songs. However, when we focus on what goes on on stage, and here we are only interested in Pina Bausch, we will recognize that things are not as they seem….Following careful observation, we realize that in reality the words are spoken at the wrong time by the wrong people. Thus, not only is reality broken down but also there is an opportunity to show other aspects of the person who speaks, overturning the initial ideas that we may have formed about him or her. Being unable to speak correctly, the man reveals obsessions, introversion, an unnatural infantilism in his behaviour, and most importantly, unfulfilled wishes which can not emerge otherwise but only through the shattered speech which makes him loose oneself in the magic of the nonsensical phrases which he pronounces with admiration or curiosity. Full of curiosity, then, he tries to explain, to fill the void with a new phrase, which however, takes him even further into the abyss of incomprehension with his own self and the others, ending in a Babel with comic and unforeseen conferences. The beings who circulate on stage are unable to communicate, despite their speech being syntactically and grammatically correct. The respect afforded to the building blocks of speech is exaggerated, intensifying the irony for security, the distance and happiness which the speech is a guarantor of when logic fails or rather when its boundaries are shown to be narrow and inflexible. “I speak therefore I know who I am” is one of the most basic precepts which Pina Bausch subverts with caustic irony, occasionally with bitterness and innocent humour. In “1980”three and a half hours are spent watching reminiscences like rifling through an old photographic album or cleaning out a room that has been vacated. A scene at the beach looks much like a painting by George Seurat but does not render itself to further analysis (the scene exaggerates the neurotic intention of the people who sunbathe to expose some parts or to cover them up), coexists with scenes of birthdays, trials of burials (the couple who dance in a deep embrace, the woman immovable in the hands of the man on a piece of stage that has been cleaned from the grass that covered it at the beginning) and so on. (There are of course many other issues that emerge from Pina Bausch’s multidimensional work, such as the implicit comment on the conventions of the spectacle). The lack of continuity is a very important part of the work precisely like its opposite, the reconciliation with it. In watching Pina Bausch, the audience must forget their wish for linear commentary and to grasp the lack of continuity, the time travel, the arbitrary condensation of past and future. For example in “1980” the lonely birthday of the woman who sings “Happy birthday to me” may function as memory (past) but also as a thought for the future (lonely birthdays to come). The music is a collage of sounds, rhythms, children songs interspersed with long periods of silence and acts as the background against which the false reality of Pina Bausch is staged. Is her work-in the wide sense-political? Pina Bausch herself denies it, finding refuge in the statement (but there is not any political comment nor references to politics in my work”. Despite her protestations, one could suggest the opposite. Away from the decorative perception of the reformed and at a distance form the violent accusations of Hans Kresnik or the feminist isolation of Reinhild Hoffmann, Pina Bausch studies in depth and detail the characters of her works, ending up in complex images of her personal positions, widely known of human behaviour and part observations taken from scenes of daily life. Bausch follows the dictates of her English teacher Anthony Tudor (during her short stay in the USA in the 60s) as well as the manner of analysis and detailed observation of the social network of her other teacher, Kurt Jooss, but at the end she decomposes, cuts them in pieces and takes away their plausibility, so that she can regurgitate them for the audience in a narrative format which is consistent with the human being’s lack of knowledge of him- or herself. Her critique of the social conventions, the life style, the idea of happiness is caustic and intense. Hypocrites, with good intentions, living in false conditions of knowledge which can tumble down at any time, uncertain and clumsy, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, her heroes, are vulnerable and imperfect, big clingy babies in adult costumes and roles. These are images which can bring about sadness, melancholy, pain and may start up in the audience personal issues which can in turn be distressing. In Bausch works, one must be alert for what appears at first to be simplistic and easy fun and strange angles of the human body. These tricks are metaphors for the ignorance and miscommunication. Often during one of her plays, members of the audience walk out, or try to find a way to deal with the emotional burden experienced during the performance. In such times, laughter, even embarrassed, can be a valuable ally. The laughter which can guard off the cruelty of a process of recognition.