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One
of
the
most
acclaimed
works
by
the
German
dance-theater
maker
Pina
Bausch
(1940-2009)
is Le Sacre du printemps/ The Rite of Spring from 1975, set to Stravinsky’s eponymous composition from 1913. Just over half an hour, it was originally written for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky.
Stravinsky’s
brooding,
brutal
score
and
Nijinsky’s
archaic,
shamanic
tale
of
sacrificial
rites
had
famously
set
off
a
riot
in
1913,
at
the
Paris
Opera.
Bausch’s
own
choreographic
version
turned
into
a
provocation
in
a
Germany
caught
between
its
stifling
post-War
puritanism
and
the
sexual-feminist
explosions
of
the
70s.
Seeing
it
again
now,
the
work
struck
me
as
both
timeless
and
contemporary.
Given
the
enduring
war
of
the
sexes,
today’s
gender
battles
and
growing
awareness
of
rape
as
a
weapon
of
war,
Bausch’s Sacre is
as
shocking
as
ever:
a
group
of
14
young
girls
is
ritually
violated
by
a
group
of
18
men
and
(as
in
Nijinsky’s
original)
one
of
the
girls,
the
“Chosen
One,”
is
forced
to
dance
herself
to
death.
In the half-century since its world premiere, Bausch’s LeSacre du
printemps has almost exclusively been performed by her company,
Tanztheater Wuppertal. It was introduced to the US first in Los Angeles,
opening the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival. Now, exactly 50 years later, it
returned to LA and passed through Berkeley, presented by Cal
Performances. The revival marked a stark surprise: it was performed by 32
dancers from 14 African nations. A second creation, common ground[s]
filled the first part of the program, but more about that later.
The piece starts with the embarrassment of the girls having to face
womanhood. They are wearing nothing but a thin white slip, which some of
them raise to cover their faces like children trying to hide their shame,
showing their underwear. They anxiously stare at a red cloth that lies like a
pool of blood on the dirt-covered stage. They toss the crumpled red fabric
– the only color onstage -- between them and pass it on surreptitiously like
something too hot to touch.
The men arrive and both groups go into spasms of running, stomping, and
dipping into deep pliés with wide-spread legs that stretch the fabric of the
women’s slips. They slice the air with arms that pump and thrust toward
the earth, toward their sex, with elbows hitting stomachs with ferocious
repetition –gestures one can read as painful goading, self-hatred and fury.
During Stravinsky’s lyrical, melancholic passages they trod in a vast circle
like beasts of burden, crumpling to the ground.
The women gather in a tight huddle and a few try to slip away for a
moment of longing, but quickly rush for cover. A bit later, a few brave or
desperate ones glide away from the pod to approach the leader of the men
who is motionless, waiting. One after another, they try offering him the ball
of red cloth, only to shrink back in panic.
When the sacrificial girl finally comes out to be chosen, the whole group
goes into a sexual frenzy, men hunting down women, women hurling
themselves at the men. Then all stop to watch, breathless, sweating,
covered in dirt, as the Chosen One is shown off to everyone by the leader.
She now wears the red cloth as her dress. While he lies down on his back
with his arms stiffly raised like an erection, she begins her dance of self
-destruction.
“How would you dance if you knew you would have to die?” was the
question Bausch asked at the start of her work on Sacre. She would always
start with questions and the dancers tried to answer them until the work
found its definitive shape. The revival follows the exact same
choreography set to the same recorded version of Stravinsky’s score,
conducted by Pierre Boulez with the Cleveland Orchestra. And yet. The 32
dark, glistening bodies seemed to exceed what the white, slightly more
“dancer”-like company achieved in the past. The faces were blurred in the
dim stage light, and the impeccable movements of the dancers electrified
with their longer limbs, powerful speed and energy. More perhaps than
ever, the depersonalized violence came across as total immersion -- an
explosive force beyond “dance.”
After Bausch’s death, her son Salomon Bausch started the Pina Bausch
Foundation to preserve and promote her legacy. He has been instrumental
in this cross-cultural expansion of Bausch’s work. The revival of LeSacre
printemps is a collaboration between the Pina Bausch Foundation,
Wuppertal, the Sadler’s Wells, London, and the Senegalese Ecole des
Sables (Dakar) with its founder-director Germaine Acogny.
Acogny, who goes by “the mother of contemporary African dance,” used to
work with Maurice Béjart’s school Mudra in Brussels. She created Mudra
Afrique as well as several dance companies. She met Pina Bausch and saw
her Sacre in the 90s. Her international dance center Ecole des Sables sent
out the call in 2019, and 250 dancers from all over Africa competed to be
part of the project and world tour. The 38 chosen ones have diverse
technical and artistic backgrounds, but the rehearsal directors – several of
the original dancers from Wuppertal -- noted that the African dancers
shared a comparative ease with the mind-boggling rhythms and
syncopations of Stravinsky’s score.
Some people may have seen the documentary Dancing at Dusk: Pina
Bausch in Senegal on YouTube -- a final rehearsal performed on a beach,
in 2020, just before the pandemic delayed the project. It’s a fascinating
document, but you need a theater, a stage-set and lighting to receive the
full impact of the work.
common ground[s] – Germaine Acogny and Malou Airaudo
common ground[s] is an intimate scenic “dialogue” between the two
women who were essential in carrying through the project of a revival of
Bausch’s Sacre: dancer and choreographer Germaine Acogny and Malou
Airaudo, a Tanztheater Wuppertal member of the first hour. They co
-created a meditation on friendship and mutual support.
The two seniors in their seventies (Acogny is almost eighty) sit together in
front of a huge backdrop that evokes an African sky going from sunset to
sunrise and back to darkness. A beautiful score by Fabrice Bouillon
LaForest melds strings, electronics and nature sounds. The two women in
long black dresses hold each other in their laps like mother and child,
embrace like sisters, perhaps fleetingly like lovers, shuffle around a bit,
handle a long stick with grace, plunge their feet into water buckets, mimic
flying together, exchange a brief, almost inaudible reminiscence of Pina,
and address the unknown with fine irony by singing a few bars of
“Que sera.”
Airaudo’s arm movements recalled the iconic Pina port de bras, but
otherwise avoided “balletic” associations. Acogny only once graced the
audience with a phrase of dancing, bringing her tall, androgynous figure
and gestures to mesmerizing--but all too brief--effect.
I found the piece lovely but lacking tension and risk. It seemed to be a draft
of something that still has to emerge. Here it served to set the mood for the
extraordinary voyage into Pina Bausch’s “African” Rite of Spring.
*
The 1975 original can be seen on YouTube, and in order to imagine the
almost unimaginable transformation of the piece, here is a glimpse.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XLRsR7cmIc
Photos - Maarten Vanden Abeele
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