Jamie Jones in Vanity Fair, December
1994:
Dance theater à la Pina raids the closet of
20th-century art and performance, and transmutes the
disparate elements by alchemy into something completely
original. Surrealistic eroticism, astringent Brechtian
satire, and a bold dash of cabaret vamping are united with
traditional modern-dance movement to create an experience
that manages to be at once metaphorical and yet palpably,
searingly real. The audience is gripped with suspense, even
if the story remains elliptical, allusive, and at times
bewildering.
Susan Manning in TDR 30, no.2:
Pina Bausch has evolved the most distinctive and the most
internationally-known form of tanztheater. . . . Like her
contemporaries in theater, Bausch combines a visually rich
production style with techniques drawn from Stanislavski and
Brecht, and the result approaches Artaud's idea of a theater
of cruelty. Her performers employ alienation techniques,
undercutting the spectator's sympathetic identification by
presenting their role-playing as self-consciously
theatrical. The result is a performance that simultaneously
distances and engages the spectator. This push and pull
leaves many spectators exhausted by the end of the evening,
overwhelmed by the emotional complexity of the experience.
Bausch's theater of cruelty effects a peculiar catharsis,
for the experience of the work leaves spectators drained,
but with no sense of resolution.
Photographs of Works by Pina Bausch
Sacre
du printemps (1975)
Café
Müller (1978)
Arien
(1979)
Nelken
(1982)
Viktor
(1986)
Nur
Du (1996)
Der
Fensterputzer (1997)
