Pina Bausch at Sadlers Wells - Summer 2012

I saw Palermo, Palermo and Como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si at Sadlers Wells in the early summer, two of the Ten Cities ballets Pina Bausch devised towards the end of her career. I've seen the Wim Wenders movie Pina, and the documentary Dancing Dreams, about a group of teenager rehearsing Kontakthof in the Tantztheatre Wuppertal company. That's the really interesting one.

The Wenders movie doesn't get the experience of watching a Bausch piece live. For one thing, they are long, usually between two and three hours, and sustained, meaning that while there are scenes and dancers come and go, the action doesn't stop, there are no acts - though there is an interval. Then there's the whole presence thiang. Even the scenery has it - critics can't mention her Rite of Spring without mentioning the peat moss, and the breeze block wall that crashes to the stage at the start of Palermo Palermo actually creates the set the dancers have to work with. When the company assembles en masse across the stage, it's a dramatic moment in itself: they are thirty of the most individual dancers anywhere, and I don't know how the women in the audience feel about the male dancers, but I know what I feel about the women: simply ten of the most physically-present and desirable women I've ever seen. With other companies, you're watching a performance, with the Basuch troupe, you're watching an event.

I'm still not quite sure what I saw at Sadlers Wells. I have a feeling that I won't look at classical and contemporary dance again in the same way: it's all going to look a little... uncommitted? stylised? generic? emotionally light-weight? None of those are adjectives you could use to describe flamenco either, but flamenco didn't affect the way I saw other genres. I guess I had a space on the shelves already marked "passionate virtuoso Spanish gypsy dancing" - I just didn't know how good the best are. There's no ready-made space for Pina Bausch's work, so it upsets all the other books on the shelf.

According to the interviews with her dancers, Ms Bausch didn't say a lot, but when she did, it was cryptic and inspiring. Lutz Forster describes how just before the performance after an awful rehearsal, he and Bausch had their ritual exchange, and then she said "Don't forget, you have to scare me." Anna Wehsarg says: "New in the company, I didn't yet grasp how Pina worked. And she didn't explain it. I was lost. Until I realised I had to pull myself up by my own hair." Yet Ms Bausch hired her, and did so because she saw a dancer who had something unique to bring as a performer, and was prepared to give her the time to work out what she needed to do. 

The only other person I can think of who hired performers for what they could bring, and then let them get on with it at their pace, was, of course, Miles Davis. Who also said very little by way of advice, and much of that cryptic. It works if you can spot talent, are prepared to adapt to the strengths and weaknesses of the people you hire, and hire people whose technique fits what you need. It doesn't work if you need three new Swans for the corps de ballet or a couple of second violins to saw away at the pops. It works, in other words, if you are an idiosyncratic artist of some considerable creative ability, unique vision and don't need to control every last detail.

The dancing in Bausch's work is there to convey emotion and story. Swan Lake could as well be staged with technically-competent fourteen year-olds as the Swans, and it probably has. There would be no difference to the impact of the piece. A Bausch piece needs to be done by grown-ups who can bring the emotional weight and presence it needs. This becomes very clear watching the teenagers in Dancing Dreams, when you can see how much of an effort it is for them, not to make the moves, but to create the presence the moves need. Take the time to watch this interview with one of the company's repetiteurs.

Most of the time, the audience is the judge of the performer. If the punters don't laugh, the comic ain't funny. There are a handful of non-mainstream creators who are the measure of an audience: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Eva Yerbabuena, John Cage... to name but a few. Watching Bausch's work made me feel the same way: I had to measure up, to learn how to respond. If you ever get the chance to see a performance by the company, see it. You might not make sense of it immediately, but you will know you've seen something no-one else is even close to attempting and which will change the way you look at ballet.

Hofesh Shechter: Political Mother

I've had a few cultural WTF moments, of which the longest-lasting and most memorable was a Glenn Branca concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall I chose at random. If you've never heard his music, it's made, or was then, by a group of musicians playing cheap and raucous guitars. Badly. At the end of the first piece, I asked the person sitting next to me if this was what they had expected to hear, and they told me it was. It's one of the few ways of making music I haven't clued into. That and Robin Holloway.

Anyway, to Sadlers Wells last Friday evening, to see Hofesh Shecter's Political Mother, again on spec. I should have known something was up from the buzzy, almost party atmosphere and the fact that the front ten or so rows had been removed and there were a lot of people standing in front of the stage. Then the lights went out. Dark. Then the music started, a string sextet, and some dancers came out and I was fine with that, I prefer abstract dance, and then the nine piece German Heavy Metal rock band on a platform above the string sextet blasted off, joined shortly by three drummers on the stage underneath the string sextet. That was a pretty good WFT moment. Loud as it was, the sound system was clear and precise, so it wasn't painful. The video below gives you an idea of the dancing, but no idea at all of the sheer physical presence of the music and the impact of the setting.



I would love to know how choreographers write for these large ensembles where the dancers are doing similar, but not the same, things at roughly the same time, except for four dancers who are clearly doing something slightly different. Especially when everyone has to make those fast wavy hand, body and leg motions. It's east enough to choreograph a bunch of classical swans, because they're all doing the same thing at the same time, and that's the point. I have the impression that Bob Fosse started by having everyone doing the same thing and then gave each dancer their own little variations. How Shechter deals with a troupe that size, I can only guess.

If you get the chance, you have to see this. Oh, it's probably some political allegory or statement or something, but I couldn't really care about that. It's damn good fun.

In The Upper Room - Sadler's Wells

Another trip to Sadler's Wells, this time to see the Birmingham Royal Ballet in a three-part programme with very long intervals (I didn't know about the long intervals). The first piece was Kenneth MacMillan's Concerto, which was pretty and pointless in that strange way that modern dance can be. The second was Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, which was fun and sexy. But I was still waiting to be amazed.

The third piece. Twyla Tharp's In The Upper Room. Music by Philip Glass. I'm wondering. This could be painful. It starts.

In three minutes, I'm entranced and it's clear we're in the presence of The Real Thing. The Birmingham dancers were fluid, loose-limbed and scattered around the beat, which gave the whole thing an informal feel - it's clearly notated to an inch of its life, but the dancers made it seem like they were making bits of it up. And I like that improvisatory feel.



The way the dancers seem to solidify as they come through the smoke is slightly magical and the finale will make you shout "Yeah!" If you've ever sat through an evening of rigorous modern dance, thinking "that's a really cool trick, and they are technically brilliant, but where's the fun?", here's your antidote.