The Rite of Spring/ common ground[s], Sadler’s Wells: Pina Bausch’s masterpiece steals the show
It’s a case of third time lucky for this long-delayed double-bill, which finally opened at Sadler’s Wells on Wednesday night. The thrilling new staging of The Rite of Spring, Pina Bausch’s groundbreaking 1975 masterpiece, danced by a specially assembled company from 13 African countries, was initially scheduled for spring 2020. It shared the fate of countless other events that Covid-dominated year, though we were treated to a film of the company dress-rehearsing, Dancing at Dusk, online.
The programme was scuppered again in June 2022 when an outbreak of Covid meant that Rite ran on its own (and with a reduced cast) at Sadler’s Wells; common ground[s], meanwhile, appeared at the theatre’s Elixir Festival earlier this year. The two works are now reunited, at last, in London after an international tour.
Bausch’s Rite – a ritualistic dance to the death on a peat-covered stage – is a work that never seems to lose its visceral power. English National Ballet is the only British company allowed to perform it, so it is rarely enough seen for it to be a treat. This five-day run has sold out already, so has BREATH, the 25-minute installation capturing the sound of the company’s bodies as they perform Rite’s choreography, scheduled at Sadler’s Lilian Baylis studio on November 10.
Any work billed with The Rite of Spring tends to suffer in comparison and, for obvious reasons – its scene-stealing power, plus 3,060 kilograms of soil on stage – it usually closes the evening. Its partner here is common ground[s], a duet created and danced by Germaine Acogny, founder of École des Sables, and Malou Airaudo, best known for her work with Bausch. It’s a meditative piece of dance theatre, which is to say a little slow, that takes place in a similar world to Rite’s.
The score, by Fabrice Bouillon LaForest, featuring crackling thunder and the trill of insects, helps to place us in a remote, rural place. Acogny, who is 80, dances with her back to us, in her own private world, her gorgeous shoulders and arms undulating. It’s a work of symmetry, with splashes of tenderness and humour, that also acknowledges the damage done by a colonial past.
Much of the audience remains in their seats in the interval to see the containers of soil arrive on stage – the industrious rakers usually get a round of applause of their own. But as soon as that solo bassoon plays Stravinsky’s opening bars, we are in another place entirely. A dancer lies face down on the soil, her body gently rippling as she breathes. One by one she is joined by the other women. When those primal chords begin, the tension ratchets up a notch, and after the male dancers join them, the noose tightens again. The work covers so much in less than 40 minutes: sacrifice, orgiastic abandon, a battle of the sexes, groupthink, even fleeting moments of tenderness.
As the panic-stricken group scatters and reassembles in kaleidoscopic patterns, choreographic motifs recur: thrusting stabbing gestures, deep pliés, slow-moving meditative circles. A thrill of watching a company with such richly varied training – including traditional African dance, contemporary, hip hop, capoeira, jazz and circus – is catching glimpses of a dancer’s background: the reach of balletic lines, the shoulder roll of street dance. Every single dancer moves with complete commitment and immersion.
A special mention is deserved for Manuella Kouassi, dancing the Chosen One, who leaves it all on the peat, but every single member of the company moves with complete commitment and immersion. It is a work worth waiting for.
Until Nov 10. Tickets: 00 7863 8000; sadlerswells.com