What Do We Care and Why?

Pina Bausch was a woman that was not afraid to be herself and explore the human relationship physically, mentally, and emotionally. To me, I feel that Bausch is one of the few artist that defined Modern dance in a way that dancers today could be a part of; reality. Nothing moved her more than the curiosity of connection and relation between two people and the genuine offering one had and felt. She took risks in creating what was personal but not literal. What made someone smile? What made someone cry? Questions that we forget to ask ourselves once in awhile because we are scared of these emotions but Pina showed how to embrace them.

We should learn from Pina in the sense that we are human and these questions and emotions are natural. They are what makes us who we are today. She put a different perspective on dance and today, I feel that artists forget to do the same. Not all but most dance scenes today seem to have more of an entertainment aspect behind it and there aren't much companies that embrace the genuine qualities of the human mind and emotions. She shows us not to be afraid of our own thoughts and to live and explore ourselves more than we would. Bausch explores the knowing of what makes us move and live.


Her work is the most inspiring, realistic, and deals with some untouchable topics that I am afraid to explore. But she makes me want to risk what I have, experience the challenges, and overcome my personal tendencies to ignore situations that I don't want to face. Pina Bausch is a one of a kind woman that expresses so much of herself to her work that makes people, no matter how old or young, find that connection to relating themselves in her dances and choreography. That's why I think Bausch a woman to never forget and to always take time to learn and understand.

- Kao

I remember the first time I saw Pina’s work.  It was the section of Café Muller where a man comes and moves a couple into different embraces.  I got a sickening feeling deep down in my gut.  It pulled my chest downwards and my tears outward.  I have never been so pulled so far down and deeply back into my past as I was in the moment.  There are few things with the power to do that, movement is one of them.  More specifically, Pina’s ability to create the rawest authentic emotion within her work has affected people from around the world, including me, in a manner that few other things have been able to do.

As dancers, we constantly are asking ourselves what something means to us, what is behind it, where does this come from.  As people, we are expected to put on a lens, revealing only what is socially acceptable for the specific situation we may find ourselves in or to please the group of people we happen to find ourselves with.  The most beautiful aspect of Pina’s work is that she strips away the lens of social acceptance and foces out the true underlying feelings and stories that each of us, as humans, have.  This untainted raw movement is something that I long to be able to achieve.  To just be seen as I am, an ultimate goal of mine, is the exact ability that Pina had; to bring that out within her dancers is the reason I am so drawn towards her.  Pina Bausch was put on this Earth to create dance and to remind us that we are people and there is nothing more beautiful than this.

-Brenna

 

Overall

Love, relationships, and quarrels were themes that threaded throughout Pina’s work. These deeply rooted subject matters were exposed to her at a very young age while working at her mother and fathers café.  She used to hide under the tables, secretly listening and observing the customers which gave her insight into the human psyche. 

These experiences are evident in her famous work Cafe Mueller performed in 1978, May 20.  Here is a clip of the piece.

It is interpreted that the doors from the set of Cafe Mueller comes from the perspective of Pina's childhood memories of the cafe. There are ghostly lost shadows of people that wander about the stage. Perhaps these were recreations of World War II and the effects that it had on her surrounding society. Here is a website of a review by Luke Jennings.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/feb/17/dance.modernism

Pina Bausch asks questions that involve her dancers to express themselves not only in an abstract way but with a different approach to their creating movement. Repetition and multiple ways of asking questions, Pina wants her dancers to explore their emotions and she wants the genuine reaction of how a person would react when asked certain questions or to do specific tasks. This is what makes her work so appealing, emotionally, and easy to relate to.

Influences To Who She Was

It’s interesting because there is no technique or classes to be taught that would be Bausch style. She has influenced the dance world in a different Modern approach. 

She created the Tanztheater Wuppertal and she had an enormous impact in the German community in Opera and Cinema.  Bausch threads her knowledge of dance, speech, and theatrical effects and music. But she is influenced not only by her life but her dancers’ lives. In rehearsals, she finds a way to make her dancers express, explore, and spill out their secrets. One of her biggest influence is the surrealism and theatrical boundaries. Most influence that she uses in her works and choreography is with the people she has trained with. Kurt Jooss, who was a leader of dance during the German Expressionism Movement, was a teacher at the Folkwang Schule in Essen, Germany while Bausch was a young girl studying. Bausch was also fortunate to get a scholarship to attend Julliard in New York and her teachers there, Jose Limon, Paul Taylor, Antony Tudor, and Paul Sanasardo were her influences. One artist that she never worked with but followed his development of “dance theater” was Rudolph von Laban. His idea of performing influenced Pina Bausch and is used in all of her work. She understood movement from these people and they have influenced her to be what she was and what she made from it.

Kurt Jooss

About Me

Kao Zhong Xiong

I am Laotian and I am 20 years old. I started dancing on my high school dance team focusing on Poms and Hip Hop. My goals were to win and see how far I could go with the experience I had but after a couple of years, my goals shifted to learning as much as I could instead of just winning. I am interested in learning the many forms of dance and that goes from classical to cultural. Hip Hop definitely influences me and my movement today since it is the style that I started with and used to be most comfortable with. I also value experience when it comes to dance. Dance offers many different opportunities and challenges that I am willing to try and overcome for myself and to have for my professional dance career.


Brenna Marlin

My name is Brenna Marlin.  I am twenty-two years old and have been studying dance at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for the past three years.  I first was introduced to dance movement at the age of fourteen when I joined a pom/dance team.  It was this form of movement that I practiced until I graduated high school in 2008.  After attending college for a year, I found that my interests truly lied within the world of dance.  As a  mover, I value an individual's personal take on the life.  I enjoy seeing the way others interpret relationships and how they connect to the environment.  Currently, I am examining the many views our society has on sex and sexual relationships.  

Pina Bausch

Biography

Pina Bausch was born in Solingen, Germany on July 27, 1940. 

Dancing at the age of 14, she danced at the Folkwangschule in Essen which was then directed by Kurt Jooss. After her graduation, she received a scholarship to study abroad to The United States; specifically Julliard in New York City. She has worked with Paul Taylor, Antony Tudor, and Jose Limon in which she traveled to Spain and performed at New American Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company. She then joined Kurt Jooss as his artistic director and soloist with the Folkwang Ballet Company and from there she started to create her own choreographic pieces. The most common theme with Bausch's works show female and male interactions. Whether it is simple dialogue to the structure of repetition, Bausch always had a surreal nature to her works. She was married to Rolf Borzik who died of Leukemia and then she partnered with Ronald Kay that together, they had a son named Salomon. Pina Baush died of an unstated form of cancer in the year 2009. In 2011, her company members and director Wim Wenders filmed a documentary of her works and the film has $13,992,869 dollars at the box office total worldwide. 

 

Pina was a woman with the innate ability to see the depth within a person.  To guide someone towards the next step in their lives with as few as six words, "You just need to get crazier!"  This ability of hers is what made people from across the world flock to see her choreographic works.  Pina Bausch was able to capture the essence of a feeling, moment, even humanity in her works and this is why she will forever be an inspiration for our world.