There was Pina fever last time Tanztheater Wuppertal visited us with their production of Vollmond. While the stage was filled with water, the temperature rose in the packed auditorium.
When Pina Bausch died in 2009, the legendary German choreographer had long inspired film-makers such as Wim Wenders, Federico Fellini and Pedro Almodóvar. Many people watched Wenders' 3D film Pina in 2011, and in 2002's Talk to Her Almodóvar showed excerpts from her Café Müller and Masurca Fogo.
It is Masurca Fogo – «fiery mazurka» – her dance company now brings to Oslo, under the artistic direction of Lütz Förster. Dancers perform on stilts and with chairs. There is sunbathing, heavy breathing into microphones, and the sound of waves breaking against a backdrop of two videos and images of the sea. «I think it is beautiful to have such real things on the stage: earth, leaves, water,» Bausch said in Pina Bausch: Tanztheatergeschichten.
«The awkward, absurd and comical go hand in hand,» writes Therese Bjørneboe of Pina Bausch's pieces, which she calls the theatre of the body. «It is always about loneliness, vulnerability and fear, trying to reach out to others. Our common humanity is highlighted: disgrace and desire, power and powerlessness, the tragic and the ridiculous.»
«Bausch recruited dancers with their own personal expression to her company, and often used her own and her dancers' experiences when creating a piece,» writes Therese Bjørneboe in Kroppens teater (The theatre of the Body).
Produced by Wuppertal Tanztheater Pina Bausch in conjunction with EXPO '98 Lisbon and Goethe-Institute Lisbon.