Pina (Film by Wim Wenders)

Pina (Film by Wim Wenders)

Pina Bausch glimmers as a wonderful jewel in the history of contemporary dance through Wender’s depiction of her choreography. Her choreography appears raw, subtle, at times filled with spiritual melancholy, at others utterly and almost frighteningly human. The exuberance of the water dance epitomised the wonder we feel on interacting with the elements during infancy. The fascination of Pina with the elements is delightful and emerges through her dance as the expression of a very human awareness of our own origins from those elements and in a sense the desire to return to them, to a state of simplicity, to the primordial womb of the earth and cosmos. This consciousness of surrounding substance from which we are both well defined and yet submerged has a wonderful effect on the onlooker’s perception of the dancers’ bodies, which appear to simultaneously materialise from and blend back into a matrix, of air, water, earth. Her choreography for Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is terrifying and yet moving. The dance opens with a solitary female form writhing sensuously, the red cloth spread beneath her signifying the menstrual blood and awakening sexuality. All that follows is then, like Said’s description of Glenn Gould’s playing, “passion without sensuality,” as the movements become tribal and nightmarish. Her choreography for Rite of Spring however moves as a beautiful and tragic depiction of the loss of innocence and of the startling power of sexual passions.

Her Cafe Muller is a stunning exploration of relationships (used in Pedro Amalvodar’s Habla Con Ella). Commencing with a woman moving across the stage with eyes shut, placing blind faith in her male counterpart to move the chairs that are strewn across her path. Another figure mysteriously appears on stage and redirects the comportment of the lovers, moving her lips towards the man into a loving kiss, placing the arms less tightly about one another and finally placing the lady in the man’s arms. The man continues to drop the woman after which she returns to a frantic, passionate embrace that almost obscures the two separate figures. The figure appears on stage again to try to rearrange the attitude of the lovers. It is a very interesting part of the dance. Who is the stranger? Is he an angel or divine force trying to aid the lover’s intimacy, explaining and correcting the imperfections of human love? Is he in fact society, attempting to conventionalise the love and break up the intimacy through creating ideals of how the two should express love? Is he an artist idealising the forms created by loving by turning the messy reality of passion into cliqued formations? Is he even a lover, who is intervening in the dynamics of their relationship.  Whichever the interpretation drawn at the end the man cannot seem able to support the weight of his beloved and repeatedly drops her as a result, suggesting the fallibility of that human love.

(to be continued....)