Review: CLUB AMOUR – ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2025 at Adelaide Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Ray Smith, Sunday 16th March 2025/

The foyer was virtually empty as my guest and I sat at the Quartet Bar of the Adelaide Festival Centre waiting for the doors to open for the three performances as part of Club Amour by dancers from Tanztheater Wuppertal and Terrain, works by Pina Bausch and Boris Charmatz.

Soon, our fellow observers began to gather but, rather than head for the bar, they started to stand in an enormous queue which stretched from door three, through the theatre, almost to the distant doors and there they waited for 2:00pm when the show was due to start. By 2:25 they were sitting in a queue still waiting for the show to start. My guest and I sipped gin and tonics and watched them.

The fact that the great dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch's name is part of the company's title suggests a rather extraordinary evening of dance was to ensue, but I am afraid that that title is the only thing left of Bausch within this particular company these days. The artistic director, and leader of Terrain, Boris Charmatz, is certainly not Pina Bausch.

There were to be three pieces presented.

Aatt enen tionon, a verbal extension of the French term “attention”, which roughly translates to “look” was first performed in 1996 and choreographed by Charmatz.

Herses, which literally translates to “harrows”, is part of a larger piece called herses (une lente introduction), harrows (a slow introduction), was also choreographed by Charmatz and was first performed in 1997.

Cafe Muller, choreographed and directed by Pina Bausch, was first shown in 1978.

The first two performances were to be viewed from the stage itself, the audience standing or sitting around the performance space, and the final show would be viewed from the auditorium seating.

As we entered for the first offering, the sound of PJ Harvey belting out at high volume filled the space and at centre stage was a tower consisting of three levels, one above the other, only a few metres square. On each level stood a dancer, naked from the waist down.

The music stopped and, in the silence, the three dancers moved languidly, illuminated by three large spheres of light. As a low vocal drone began to fill the void the dancers moved in a more energetic manner, measuring their individual spaces, performing handstands, and thudding to their floor surface with increased violence. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and the lack of trousers seemed all the more gratuitous because of it.

Performance number two was to be in the same space, but the audience was left in situ to watch the stage crew clear away the tower and its associated globes for quite a while, an interval without the comfort of proximity to the lavatories, the bar, or even a chair seemed a little odd, but the PJ Harvey soundtrack was cranked again and at least one audience member made use of it by dancing on her own. Should she need any verification, I can tell all who read this that she did actually dance on the Festival Theatre stage, and so far this evening it was the best performance yet.

The performance space finally bared by the crew, two dancers entered just as bare as the stage, lit by a single light from above and, in silence, the naked pair slowly walked to the centre of the space. A slow pas de deux ensued, the overhead lighting casting shadows on their bodies, highlighting every muscle and sinew, every rib and hip in a very sculptural way. A rhythmic splashing of water and unidentified creaks rose through the silence as the dancers writhed and twisted, their limbs tangling as they rolled and caressed.

It was extremely sexual and, while there were moments of staggering beauty, there were also intimations of restraint and domination, an uneasy but fluid battle. Once again Charmatz had left me with a feeling of pointlessness. Flashes of Greek statuary and the occasional nod to Moses Pendleton notwithstanding, this piece left me cold.

We all trundled out to the auditorium to find whatever seats we fancied in this general admission show, only to see that, once again, we were watching the theatre crew dress the stage for the next performance. My guest and I took advantage of the delay and made our way to the toilets, along with several other rather perplexed-looking audience members, before heading back to our rows of seats. I glanced wistfully over my shoulder at the bar as I was guided back through door three, in order to quickly find my seat and wait for another 15 minutes as the crew finished their work.

“We have spent more time waiting than watching”, my guest accurately observed.

Cáfe Müller is a reasonably well-known piece and something of a classic and, while somewhat absurd, dreamlike, and often comedic it demands a great deal of attention from the audience, but under the direction of Charmatz the narrative was lost and so was my attention.

The whole evening had felt clumsy, awkward, and without focus. The dancers themselves were highly skilled, athletic, energetic, young, fit, keen to perform, and utterly rudderless. Pina Bausch has definitely left the building.

Photography, Roy VanDerVegt.