hen Pina Bausch was asked what she thought was her greatest strength and weakness , the German choreographer took a long time to answer. Audiences on both sides of the stage inside the huge hall of Liberty Grand in Toronto, studied her response on two large video projection screens facing opposite sides of the stage. All 20 feet of her lost in thought, the struggle to say what she wanted to say projected in minute detail, Bausch opted to do what she needed to do: smoke a cigarette. Knowing that anything she said might be taken as a benchmark, a revelation, or a pathway into the complexity of her inseparable life and work, the choreographer rose with a faint smile, and stepped down into the audience to retrieve the cigarette. When she came back up on stage, she answered simply: “I think my greatest weakness is my greatest strength. I think my greatest strength is my great desire”.  

You could almost hear the audience sigh: desire? For what? A passion for survival? A passion for life? A passion for the many faces of life? Love, intimacy, a smoke?  Probably all of the above and more, for what else can an artist talk about but what she is consumed by?  “I am not interested in how people move,” Bausch once said, “I am interested in what moves them”.  

Note also that Bausch’s designer, Peter Pabst, was asked by another interviewer to describe the “process” he took working along side Pina Bausch. How did he manage to understand what she was up to, if she was constantly experimenting? He responded as best he could, also trying to make sense out of it all. Just at the right moment, when things began to feel stiffly academic, Bausch made her move. Watching Pina Bausch walk out of a huge screen and down into the audience is like watching the best laid plans of interviewers go up in smoke. There wasn’t an adjective left among them.  

Well, what does she do? As I see it, Bausch’s work fuses raw, earthy energy with perceptual serenity; serenity under the buckling weight of fractious, even diabolical action. Given the paradoxical nature of creativity, the drama of Bausch’s work lies in her steady perception of the clutter in human behavior; the dance is in what moves us. In such works as Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), Café Mueller,  Legend of Chastity, Carnations, and Bluebeard there is evidence of spiritual retrieval; even revival. All good art presses against the inexplicable.  

Bausch, and her idiosyncratic performers from the Wuppertal Dance-Theatre, highlight the psychological freeze ups and blow outs that often scar our lives. A shout for recognition is no different on stage than it is off; except for where you place the accent. “Its mine, its mine”, a woman shrieks in the middle of the chaos of “Palermo, Palermo”, repeating the words over and over again. Her world collapsing around her, her arms gathering desire out of thin air, the absence of intimacy echoes in the shambles of withering away.  

As a child I used to avert my eyes whenever I witnessed a squabble, domestic or otherwise, especially one with an edge of violence to it. My mother took me to a shrink to find out why I pulled the hair out of my forehead in a crescent of semi-baldness at an age much too young to be burdened with psychological disasters. The potential of violence disturbed me. I was, what was called then, a “disturbed” child. Averting my eyes and pulling the hair out of my head was my way of coping. Later in life I developed a flair for comedy that added to my arsenalof survival and put an edge on my sword. Then I began to wise up. I learned that when you are witnessing potential violence look at it without blinking. It’s a much better read out than keeping your eyes shut or slashing back with your sword blindly. I came to admire Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan and Sitting Bull and Rabbi Ben Ezra “may his tribe increase” who, as the poet Robert Browning said, “awoke one night in a deep dream of peace” – probably after an horrific nightmare.   

All the people I admire pick up on the secrets of violence first hand and use their insights creatively.  Groundbreaking artists like Pina Bausch scramble the eggs of violence and its effects with tell tale absorption.  They make peace through remarkable ingenuity and unexpected lyricism. What I like about her work, and the surprisingly idiosyncratic performers who accompany her, is how they deal with the inflammable material: the kindling wood, the logs in the fire place, the smoke in our eyes. With each wave of the surf –to mix the metaphor – the debris behind the ocean roar shocks us back into life. The crouching tigers and hidden dragons are revealed inside the cave of our belongings. Well,  it’s a hard day’s night wherever you go.  

Toronto’s Liberty Grand is a voluminous space, a good place to go. At one time a casino, before that a horse barn for Clydesdale horses, and now a divided theatre split in half by a huge screen. My advice to keep it as a theatre; it’s the safest and sanest place to be nowadays. At least people are listening.

 ©2001 Ned Bobkoff

Ned Bobkoff is a playwright, director and teacher.
He has worked with performers in a variety of community
and cultural settings throughout the United States and overseas

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Winter 2001