Pina – A film for Pina Bausch by Wim Wenders
If Pina is playing within a 50 mile radius of where you are, arrange to see it, and if it is further away, take the weekend and see this extraordinary film.
Even if you don’t especially like dance movies, for those who love psychoanalysis you will be entranced by this movie and I believe enjoy seeing how dance brings psychoanalytic ideas to public consciousness.
It is a dance movie….an exquisite superlative dance film in which the unique choreography is always focused on relationships. We see a couple in an embrace. their arms are about each other is a certain fashion, her cheek close to his but lips not touching. they stand silently in this embrace. A man in a business suit enters from a door, goes over to them and carefully changes the arms of the embrace, keeping it an embrace, but somehow held differently, he positions her lips almost on his, and then with a swift movement he makes the girl fall in a graceful collapse and places her lying in her lovers arms and he leaves through the door in which he came.The lovers go back to their original embrace. the suited man enters and does exactly the same thing. they show no emotion; they are still together and embracing although now he is holding her limp body in his arms. the man leaves again and they go to their original embrace. The man comes through the door again, and repositions the couple ending in the limp woman in the mans arms. this is repeated exactly a number of times, and soon it gets faster. All the movements are the same, but speeded up, and when it is so fast that you can’t count the times, the man comes no more and changes the position of the lovers no more. they are free to resume their original positions. But it doesn’t matter. Without seeing him ever again, the lovers go through all the movements themselves..they are in their original embrace,then they themselves carefully change.each arm exactly as he did it, the faces is changed as he did it, the collapse of the girl occurs just as if he was there, the man is holding the girl limp in his arms. He puts her upright to the original embrace and the episode is gone over exactly as it was before and again follows with his intervention ….and over and over and over again.Will a lecture about absorbing the parent within or a talk on repetition stay as long in the mind as this emotional drama brought to life by the music, and the movement does for us.The analyst may need the teacher and discussion and argument, but for the general public a statement about human nature has been made……and will last a long time. Could that be because of the beauty of the telling of the story?
This is dance that is …. suggestive of the painters, Magritte or Chagall, but their beautiful work is held by paint on the canvas, and this canvas has movement , music and changing expression and a gamut of moods all within one frame.The music for the dances is especially beautiful. There is some orchestra, but for the most part it is vocal. Some are operatic arias, but most are German popular songs, love songs, silly songs, and poignant songs. There is also contemporary ballroom dance music, a
good amount of jazz and some American songs. the music is hardly background, it is an active part of the scene, and delightful. The costumes are also beautiful. The women generally wear beautiful strapped nightgown like dresses, that not quite opaque, show the dancers movements in a filmy dreamy manner that is quite beautiful. The woman wear all kinds of hair styles…frizzy, full, long, pony tails…no pulled back stark ballerina looks here, and like the men are young to quite old…the women are not quite as old as some of the men.There is no attempt to make everyone look like a chorus. There is tremendous individuality in these dancers…but however they look, when they dance, they are all beautiful. As dancers they are fantastic.
Pina Bausch died 3 years ago of cancer at 68. She was the director and founder of the Wuppertal Tanztheater ( a town not far from Dusseldorf, Germany). She was born in 1940 in Solingen (near Wuppertal) where her parents owned an inn that was part of a hotel. Many of her pieces involve the cafe in this inn, and this childhood environment of people coming and going , looking for happiness, the sound of music is reflected in her work. There are also sudden outbursts of panic and fear which might be reminiscent of her early experience of war. She began her dance training at 14 at the Folkwang Hochschule under Kurt Jooss. Jooss was a distinguished representative of the German modern dance movement which had freed itself from classical ballet. But his teaching of the free spirit of a dance revolution was tempered by principles of ballet. However this school also taught opera,music,drama,sculpture,painting,photography,design, and more so Pina had a broad education and used it all in her choreography.
She was given a years scholarship as a special student at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.She stayed in America another
year and was given a job at the Metropolitan Opera.After 2 years Kurt Jooss asks her to return to Germany where she worked with him. In the absence of sufficient works for the dance studio, she began to choreograph herself and won first prize at the Choreographic Competition in cologne in 1969. she was hired to become the head of the Wupertal Ballet. She renamed it the Tanztheater.Tanztheater stands for a disengagement from mere dance routine and a complete freedom in the choice and means of expression.
As she changed the way that she worked,many of her dancers left as there was very little conventional dancing in her work. with such few dancers she couldn’t use traditional choreography so she started to ask her dancers associative questions on the subject of the piece. As the pieces were developed from their thoughts her dance became dreamlike, with poetic images and a language of movement which became a worldwide success.She created spaces that were poetic, bringing the outside to the inside and expanding the stage into a landscape. the elements were very important to her. Dancers dance in rain that makes floods, so they must swim, there is soil and dirt that are spilled on them, and the environment becomes a player in the dance scene.
Her dancers stayed with her for a long time. 20 years was not unusual. she had young dancers , and old dancers. Some of the men appear to be 70 yrs old.This film made in memory to her is a gift to her from her company to thank her for the best years they have had in their lives. Portions of her famous dances are shown. The film is shown only in 3D and it is so beautiful in this respect that one feels why pay so much for a ticket to see small figures on a stage when this brings the face and the intimacy right to you in a very personal way. The company seems to be made of at least 30 or more dancers. Many of the soloists speak lovingly of Pina and after they talk we are invited to see the dance in which they star. It is very moving, and a clear picture of Pina emerges.
There is very little footage of Pina dancing. A few scenes in which a skeletal older woman does beautiful graceful arm movements and we get a sense of how beautiful and charismatic she must have been as a young dancer. The quote that is written after her picture at the end of the movie is “Dance, Dance, otherwise all is lost”.
The word picture that is developed of Pina is that she was a woman who silently observes. But she observed in a very active manner. She was part of every scene and every step. and was very connected, However, she didn’t give direction or orders or tell them to watch her to see how it was done. Instead she asked them to use their resources, their talents, and their interpretations of how something might be conveyed. She told them to search , but she never suggested what to search for or how to search, or commented if they had done a good job or found what they or she wanted. they were on their own.One young dancer during these talk sessions hid in a corner, and was too shy to reveal anything. Pina turned to her and said why are you afraid of me? I haven’t done anything to hurt you. the dancer realized she was right..that Pina recognized that she was afraid of her, and she was
able to respond and become an active participant. One dancer only got the comments from her to search. After her performance, she was called into Pina’s office. Pina said to her, “you have to get crazier”. the dancer said that was all she said to her in 20 years. But it must have been the right thing. We see several dances with this dancer, and they are superb.
There is a lot of humor…but sometimes the humor is mixed with fright. A dancer comes out alone on the stage in a sort of loose large floaty dress. Soon a man in a suit (the men are often dressed quite formally in suits or formal wear)He goes to her and wiggles her nose. Another proper suited man comes out and wiggles her ear. then another comes out and wiggles her adams apple (if she had one that is) another comes out and bends one finger on her hand to and fro. the crowd gets bigger, each man handling a minute portion of her body…some lifting her skirt to pet her knee. she is covered with men all doing something physical to her…the most dangerous is the one who is sucking or biting her wrist, but the whole effect is frightening. What is it? The insatiable desire of men to own the mother? a woman? is it devouring? hard to tell.
The opening ballet has a group of woman in pink filmy nightdresses dancing so close together that they are like one person….they move across the stage in this tight connected way…one young girl comes forward with a red sheer cloth…looks at it with fear, and drops it on the floor and the tightly knit horde dances back. then the men come out….bare chested in pajama like long pants, with their bare chests & backs covered with soil. they have a menacing look. they also dance in a horde…so close you think they will bump into one another and they have a sort of stampede…very frightening. Part of their dance is also their breathing…..it is heavy,loud..really scary. A girl emerges..against the pink dresses she has donned the red fabric which is a sheer slip dress and she offers herself to the most frightening of men.There is more than a hint of the savage.
On a trolley car sits a man looking at the scene wearing fake rabbit ears while a girl with a giant pillow comes onto the trolley. She
fights with the pillow…actual fighting, and after this she puts the pillow down on a trolley bench, and proceeds to wiggle her butt in a very sexy provocative way as she squashes down on the now beaten pillow.
A woman walks around with a tree tied to her, while another woman in stiletto heels and a sexy black dress shovels (with a big snow shovel) dirt onto a girl and others.
There is a major ballet on the Cafe of her childhood. Pina says something wasn’t right…she didn’t know what, but something. Then she decided what wasn’t right was that their eyes were open and seeing. this ballet had to be done with closed lids. She claimed with closed lids you could see the story better. the cafe is bare so chairs are placed all over, and girls are draped against the wall. As the female dancers dance in the room, men grab the chairs just in time to avoid them falling over them. Many relationships occur in this ballet….all with closed eyes.
Every dance sequence is a relationship generally between a man and a woman…or several of each. But something is going on…fear, longing, love, sadness….all of that and more and some dance is just fun and weightlessness…as if the body can fly
Is it theater of the absurd resurrected from the 50’s? Maybe. But its very very good.
Try to see it.
Selma Duckler