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.
