Dance: Remember my name

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch
Sweet Mambo
direction & choreography Pina Bausch
dancers Andrey Berezin, Naomi Brito, Nayoung Kim, Daphnis Kokkinos, Alexander López Guerra, Reginald Lefebvre, Nazareth Panadero, Helena Pikon, Julie Shanahan, Julie Anne Stanzak, Aida Vainieri
sets & video Peter Pabst
costumes Marion Cito
music Matthias Burkert, Andreas Eisenschneider
Sadler's Wells, London • 11-21.Feb.26 ★★★★

First staged in 2008, the legendary Pina Bausch's penultimate work is only now making its London premiere. It's a sprawling expressionistic exploration of human emotion that touches on everything from love and joy to isolation and fear over two hours. It's also an unusually intimate piece that allows nine dancers to express their personalities and interact with the audience. These six women and three men are a fascinating mix of nationalities and ages (seven were in the original 2008 cast), and each asks us to remember their name.

They all get to perform a range of solos and duets, with tonal shifts provided by an eclectic mix of musical genres and sound that often lifts the choreography but also sits cleverly at odds with it. All of this is assembled almost like a sketch show, with vignettes flowing into each other, echoing back and forth with running gags and repeated movement. Much of this is very funny, as scenes use both subtle wit, archly camp moments and some full-on nuttiness. As the primary comic in the piece, the delightful Nazareth Panadero adds Lynchian surrealism to her hilarious riffs.

By contrast, Julie Shanahan has the most emotional elements, especially in a stormy sequence in which she is held back again and again by men while she cries out, "Let me go!" She's also nearly run over by a table and drenched with buckets of water. Then at the very end she runs into the audience, where she grabbed me on press night begging for help because another dancer wouldn't leave her alone.

One of the key repeating images is of the three men, dressed in black, drawn to the women in their flowing colourful gowns, bothering them, pushing and pulling them (by skirts and hair), while the women both assert control and defiantly express their independence. Some scenes are sweetly romantic, others are downright harrowing. But the overall tone reflects the balance of life experiences. Highlights include young Alexander López Guerra's show-stopping twisty, groovy solo. And Naomi Brito gets a glorious spotlight turn inside a billowing curtain to Lisa Ekdahl's Cry Me a River.

Curtains feature dramatically on the bare stage, often fluttering in the breeze, occasionally with images from the 1938 German comedy The Blue Fox projected onto them. Props include pillows, masks and champagne glasses, as Julie Anne Stanzak amusingly coaxes us to whisper "brush" to look magnetic at parties. And to perform cartwheels everywhere we go. In other words, this wondrously offbeat show traverses a huge range of moods and attitudes, with choreography that is joyfully extended as well as sensually evocative, mischievous and tormented, loose, free and magical. It may feel somewhat random, but the visceral effect is powerfully celebratory.

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photos by Karl-Heinz Krauskopf, Oliver Look • 11.Feb.26