A heartfelt tribute to one of dance’s true innovators
CHIEF DANCE CRITIC
When German dance-theatre pioneer Pina Bausch died in 2009 – less than a week after her cancer was diagnosed – her shocked troupe declared that it would continue to perform the dozens of bleak, playful, absurd pieces she had made for them over the decades, but that new work, by anyone else, was out of the question.
Time passes, however, and canons (even those as rich and as distinguished as Bausch’s) can become tired: the stimulation of new work is vital for dancers. And so, in 2015, the company cast off its “heritage” mantle, commissioning four short new pieces (performed only at its base in Wuppertal), followed by two fullevening ones: the first substantial, non-bausch works ever to be made for the company. Bon Voyage, Bob by Alan Lucien Øyen, comes to Sadler’s Wells next Friday. But first up – and given it British premiere on Thursday night – is
Since She, by Dimitris Papaioannou. In the event, Papaioannou treads a laudably fine line between homage and novelty, serving up a 90-minute, interval-free work that’s unmistakably son-of-bausch, but also with enough personality of its own to justify its existence. In a fine programme note, he describes it as his love letter to his artistic “mother” – Bausch – and a “free meditation” on Café Müller (her most autobiographical work), both of which it certainly is.
But it is also very much a valediction to her, as well, I think, as a portrait of her company “since she” died, and of the journey it has faced.
It launches with a man standing on a wooden chair, on the extreme left of the stage (not quite the sort of bentwood furniture so beloved of Bausch, but near enough).
From the wings, another chair is passed to him, which he then puts down and steps on to, then another, and another, with all 15 other members of the troupe also gradually joining him. For the next few minutes, this smartly dressed lot all gradually cross the stage without once setting foot upon it, gathering chairs from the tail end of this bizarre queue and passing them over their heads to the front, like a huge, incredibly slow-moving caterpillar track.
This sense of having to navigate a river returns later, with the entire troupe gathering on top of an upturned table, “punting” themselves smoothly along on the dozens of rigid cardboard tubes that by now cover the stage.
If this, like the start, maybe represents some sort of artistic or psychological Styx, that also touches on Papaioannou’s particularly Greekfeeling sensibility, which some may remember from his choreography for the opening ceremony of the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Statuesque imagery is everywhere, and with a corresponding abundance of nudity. There are lots of bare torsos, marble-like in the bleak light, while limbs casually seem to fall off and even join forces (the dancer with one body and 10 legs is an entertaining touch). There’s also a strong little passage towards the close when two performers have their naked chests connected by thin, bendy sticks that come to resemble a shared, exterior nervous or vascular system, and that elsewhere allow Papaioannou some markedly St Sebastian-like imagery.
There is, then, a very Bauschian fusion of comic and serious here, along with a familiarly eclectic soundtrack (from Bach to Ives to Tom Waits) and an imposing, cliff-like heap of foam-rubber slabs at the rear that call to mind the great Péter Pabst’s many sets for her.
Absent, however, is the remarkable momentum of Bausch’s best pieces (even her far longer ones), along with almost any colour whatsoever. The production’s sharp, faint light and remorselessly black, white and grey palette – which makes even the muted Café Müller look positively kaleidoscopic – is remorseless and ultimately wearying, however relevant the resulting sepulchral quality might be. As a result, Since She can feel like a bit of a trudge at times, although plenty of those images do stay with you, and it shows the company looking hearteningly fresh. A match for Bausch at her best? Not at all. But, even so, I suspect the great woman would have approved. Feb 22-25. Tickets: 020 7863 8000; sadlerswells.com