How would you dance if you thought you were going to die? The legacy of Pina Bausch
Back in 2012, when Britain’s arts institutions were flush with the cash and confidence of the cultural olympiad cash and confidence, Sadler’s Wells’ artistic director Alistair Spalding tried to commission a new work by celebrated German dance-theatre choreographer Pina Bausch. “The idea was to create the company’s first piece in collaboration with an African company. The Ecoles des Sables in Senegal. But then Pina became ill – not with the illness that killed her [in 2009] – and we did something else.” He sighs, then brightens.
“Then about five years ago I got a call from the Pina Bausch Foundation (PBF),” says Spalding. “They were interested in working with the Ecole des Sables on a new performance of Pina’s Rite of Spring. They were interested in transmission – in how they might transmit works a European like Pina made in the late-20th century to different types of people, with a different energy, in the 21st century.” It felt like fate to Spalding. “As though Pina was still above us, guiding things!”
The original plan was for the new production to premiere in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, in March 2020, before touring to Bausch’s hometown of Wuppertal in Germany and London in April. But the pandemic upended those plans. All gatherings were banned on the company’s first complete rehearsal: 38 dancers from 14 countries who had bonded through Bausch’s urgent ceremonial ritual were shocked that their show would have to be sacrificed – like the chosen one in the piece – for the greater good.
Bausch’s son Salomon, Director of the PBF, brought the documentary team following the dancers’ journey out to the beach to capture one wild, passionate run through on the sand. The question driving Bausch’s choreography for Rite had always been: ‘How would you dance if you thought you were going to die?’ and now Covid had brought the possibility of imminent death into the company. The consequent film, Dancing at Dusk – which was streamed in July 2020 – caught all the fear, commitment, sweat, wind and fragile hope of those silk slips fluttering. Then the group sacrificed a sheep, lit a fire, ate the mutton and prayed together before separating.
It took another two years for the company to bring the show to London – and then Covid struck again in the company. They were forced to limit the number of dancers on stage and cancel a performance of a new work – common ground[s] – by the Ecole des Sables’ co-founder Germain Acogny and French dancer Malou Airaudo – both of them exploring points of connection and heredity as grandmothers in their late 70s.
Now – at long last – the full double bill is landing in London. It will be a treat to see Acogny and Airaudo arrive together at the end of their long journey. There is a power, wisdom and slow-washed tenderness to their duet that provides a perfect contrast with the fire and youth of the Rite which many audiences are describing as the best dance work they have ever seen.
Bausch herself always resisted interpretation of her work, which often explores the full emotional gamut of human responses to conflict, violence and trauma. Many read the fallout from her early childhood in Nazi Germany into her 1978 piece Café Müller, in which dancers sleepwalk, eyes closed, through a set filled with furniture. Clashes between the sexes in her other work led American dance critic Arlene Croce to describe it as the “pornography of pain”. Yet when I talk to the creative team behind the production, they tell me it is “all about love and empathy”.
Hunkered down in his hoodie in Germany, Salomon Bausch, says “the gift of my mother’s work lies in its openness, its accessibility to everybody”. In his role as chairman of the Pina Bausch Foundation he found himself wondering how his mother’s mid-century European choreography might be re-energised by dancers at the Ecole des Sables: The International Centre for Traditional and Contemporary African Dances, founded by Germaine Acogny and Helmut Vogt in 1994.
Charismatic and shaven-headed, Acogny explains that “traditional African dance offers great training for this piece”. The granddaughter of a Yoruba priestess – bullied for her “big butt and flat feet” as the only black student at the Ecole Simon-Siégel in 1960s Paris – has spent a lifetime perfecting and teaching the “Acogny Technique”, which is designed to celebrate “the waves of the black body”. Today, she tells me, “There are many similarities between African dance and Pina’s choreography – a lot of rapid foot movement she uses in this piece feels natural to Ivorians, for example. African dancers are also used to dancing on the earth, on sand. Although in this case we used peat. They got used to it as though they had always danced on it. It creates a rare connection between them. It gives them balance as they find each other through it.”
Acogny notes that although the company – comprising dancers from 17 different countries – has been performing Rite around the world for two years now, the dirt on stage (the conception of Bausch’s original designer, Rolf Borzik) ensures that each performance is unique. “We use peat instead of sand,” she says. “But the consistency of the peat changes every night. It can be drier, wetter, and respond very differently under the feet, making it a constant challenge for the dancers to adapt. They talk about the peat amongst themselves a lot because they must fight with it to express themselves.”
Was Acogny ever concerned that using African dancers to conjure such a brutal, primitive ritual risked playing into racist Western stereotypes of African people as less civilised? She shakes her head, fiercely. “All people have sacrificed young women, not just in Africa.” She tuts. “The Western world thinks the worst of Africa, but just look at all the rapes and murders of young women in Europe. We are dealing with our issues, and Europeans should deal with theirs.”
Acogny believes that what the dancers of the Rite demonstrate is “the magic of empathy. When the chosen one realises her fate, all the other dancers feel and express her despair along with her. We see them come together at a time when what we see in the world is just the opposite.” She shakes an angry head. “What we see in the world now is a lack of pity, we see killing. Disgusting. But in the Rite the chosen one is sacrificed for the wellbeing of everybody. Audiences experience a unity they cannot experience in the real world.”
Did Acogny – who performed Olivier Dubois’ Rite back in 2009 – ever meet Pina Bausch? “Yes!” She nods. “Bien sûr! We went for dinner. I smoked my pipe and she smoked her cigarettes.” Did you discuss her work? Acogny waves me off. “No! We talked about LIFE!”
Spalding says that while most choreographers feel “the need” to put their own spin on Stravinsky’s serrated score at some point in their careers, “many don’t know how to deal with the slower sections. Pina manages to keep the tension through those moments, as when the dancers are moving in a circle, bowing. They’re forming the shape that will become the arena of death, and it’s such a beautiful image. Then when the music becomes dramatic she has the women running at the guys so fast you’re convinced the men won’t be able to catch them. Yet they stand solid, to catch and hold onto all of that energy like trees.”
Acogny also speaks of trees. She says the work reminds her of the African tradition of gathering under special or sacred trees. “Because this company has been performing the same work for so long the Rite is now in their bones. They are not ‘performing’ it each night, they are living it.”
For this reason, Spalding thinks this production makes an ideal first dance experience for those who’ve never been to Sadler’s Wells before. “It’s all instinctive. And in fearful times you’re given an opportunity to witness a rare, wild fearlessness. Younger audiences might think of it as a form of guided meditation – an opportunity to enter into a 35-minute space when you won’t be able to think of anything other than what is occurring on the muddy stage. In an age when we’re all prone to boredom, to scrolling, it’s a rare opportunity to have your attention held and your sense of time shifts.” He smiles and concludes that, despite the dark theme of the dance, most audience members leave “feeling a sense of catharsis, of something released. Every time I see this performance I’m blown away.” Acogny agrees, fixing me with a severe stare. “It teaches,” she intones, “a profound lesson in humanity.”
At Sadler’s Wells, London EC1 from tonight until November 10. Tickets: 020 7863 8000; sadlerswells.com;
‘Dancing at Dusk’ is available on Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage until Nov 29: sadlerswells.com/digital-stage