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

Dance: Looking for love

TANZTHEATER WUPPERTAL PINA BAUSCH + TERRAIN BORIS CHARMATZ
Vollmond
choreography Pina Bausch
dancers Edd Arnold, Dean Biosca, Emily Castelli, Maria Giovanna Delle Donne, Taylor Drury, Samuel Famechon, Ditta Miranda Jasjfi, Reginald Lefebvre, Alexander Lopez Guerra, Nicholas Losada, Julie Anne Stanzak, Christopher Tandy, Tsai-Wei Tien, Tsai-Chin Yu
set Peter Pabst • costumes Marion Cito
lighting Fernando Jacon • sound Andreas Eisenschneider
Sadler's Wells, London • 14-23.Feb.25 ★★★★★

Originally staged in 2006, Vollmond (full moon) is one of Pina Bausch's final works, and still feels almost unnervingly fresh as it taps into how it feels to try to connect romantically with another person. Performed at this level of skill and artistry, this is a masterpiece of modern dance. It's staged as a free-flowing series of micro-vignettes in which the dancers throw themselves around the stage, deliver hilarious zingers of dialog and create an escalating sense of slapstick chaos as a full moon and high tide drive them to distraction. It's staggeringly involving to watch live on stage, because the staging and movement are both tactile and visceral.

Monumental and elemental, the set features a giant boulder sitting in a huge puddle of ankle-deep water. Performers enter in various ways, sometimes swimming through the water, clambering over the rock or sliding across wet surfaces. There are chairs, wine glasses, open flames and bare torsos. And the dancers act out little scenes, spiralling on their own or interacting in ways that playfully riff on the push and pull of relationships. This includes things like hair-pulling, stone-throwing and insistent kissing, all done in witty ways that continually shift the balance of power, mainly between men and women.

It's clear that these figures are tormented by the elusive nature of finding a relationship in a world that seems to conspire against them. So their extended solos express powerful emotions in between the humorous punchlines and visual sight gags. And the lighting inventively makes the most of the water, including sudden rainstorms, massive water fights and droplets that are flung from hair, clothing and buckets, dazzlingly filling the air around the completely drenched performers. This escalates over the course of two and a half hours (including an interval) until both the audience and the dancers are gasping for breath.

All of this is movingly shaded between light and dark emotions, as these gifted performers throw their full physicality into each element of the narrative, creating a riotous atmosphere that feels almost like a circus-style A Midsummer Night's Dream. There isn't a dull moment, as the musical shifts through a wide range of genres, from pulsing electronic beats to soulful Latin rhythms. And the costumes cleverly evoke both everyday streetwear and more heightened glamour, which adds some attitude along the way. In the end, there's a sense that everyone is flailing around, looking for love against the odds. But what is the alternative when we need each other to feel truly human?

For details, SADLER'S WELLS >

photos by Martin Argyroglo • 14.Feb.25

Dance: Elemental humanity

The Rite of Spring
choreography Pina Bausch
music Igor Stravinsky
restaging: artistic direction Josephine Ann Endicott, Jorge Puerta Armenta, Clémentine Deluy
set and costumes Rolf  Borzik
Sadler's Wells, London • 7-11.Jun.22

Originally choreographed by Pina Bausch at the Opera House Wuppertal in 1975, this piece has lost none of its visceral power nearly a half-century later. As we enter the theatre, stagehands are still raking and tilling a layer of soil that extends across the stage. And yes, this is part of the show, which uses the iconic Stravinsky music to recount a shattering story of elemental humanity.

With one dancer lying in the dirt in a pool of red cloth, two dozen barefoot performers enter the stage, half of them men and half of them women, gliding and pulsating, stretching their backs, rippling their muscles, heaving their bodies into the air. Occasionally the men and women regroup on their own, challenging each other and ultimately singling out a woman, who is then dressed in red and must now give the performance of her life.

There's earth-rattling power in this combination of music and movement, augmented by the fact that this is the first time that Bausch's work has been performed by a group of dancers from Africa. This gives the piece extra ripples of meaning, as it's rooted in history from the dawn of humanity while echoing the slave era, civil rights protests and Black Lives Matter. And it's so universal that it's impossible not to be carried away by the raw emotions on display.

The dancers pour everything into their performances as they become drenched in sweat, so much so that gasping for breath becomes part of the choreography. The sheer energy of the performances carries its own impact, with added reverberations in how such passionate movement echoes through society, gender and race. Yes, this is a challenging and experiential piece that demands a visceral connection with the audience. And it leaves us almost as breathless as the performers.

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photos by Maarten Vanden Abeele • 7.Jun.22