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.
My mother was an 8th grade teacher at the school where I went to half day kindergarten, and once my half day was over I would scurry like a little mouse into her classroom and hide under her desk where the big kids "couldn't see me". I would wait there for 20 minutes every day until my grandma could come pick me up. Those moments in "hiding" were exciting because I would spy on the older kids and notice what they were wearing, saying and doing. I can relate to Pina in that way, we both secretly used the power of observation out of curiosity. Do you know if her parents real cafe was named Cafe Muller? Do you know if Pina incorporated specific "characters" into Cafe Muller from her memories of people who would visit the cafe? You also mentioned that World War II effected the society around her, do you know if she had any personal ties to the war? Did any of her close friends or family serve? I know that is kind of detailed information that you may or may not have access to, but I would be curious to know exactly on what level it impacted her life and work.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read that Pina would hide under the tables to secretly study the customers, I found it a little disturbing and laughed to myself because I work at a cafe. Carrie makes a good point about the factor of curiosity. Pina repeatedly watched and studied the interactions and relationships between the individuals in the cafe. It seems as though it could also be interpreted that Pina saw a reoccuring similarity between most relationships that she had been "eavesdropping" on. This is directly correlated to the choreography in the video. The same sets of movements of the woman grasping to the man, being picked up, and dropped, was what she could have repeatedly seen with most other couples. The same set of movements repeating faster and faster through the choreography could be seen as Pina "fast forwarding" through the rest of the relationships and interactions observed. Do you think she saw the same thing over and over with different people? But the same situation?
ReplyDeleteHey Carrie!
ReplyDeleteI think it's cute how you would be curious to hide and observe from under a table but yeah, that's exactly what Pina did and she was also working for her mother and father also. Cafe Mueller was the name of the cafe her father owned and it was connected to a hotel. With the Information Brenna and I found, it didn't seem like Pina focused on certain characters and individuals on her work of Cafe Mueller but she did present the emotions and problems she had observed. She was exposed to many different situations that were between adults when she was just a child but she tried to express it in way she understood back then to now. With the war, it didn't have any information about specific family serving but it there was information about how much she would run and stay with her grandma for safety and covers. With what I've researched, the war only affected the time when she danced with Kurt Jooss and the war took away the Modern dance in Germany but only kept the Ballet. She and the Folkwang School had to close for awhile and that was the most the war impacted her dance world.
Ashley,
I think she saw all sorts of bickering, arguments, and loving she could as a child. As I told Carrie, she was a young child observing adults in their nature and Pina would express it the way she would understand as a child. I'm sure as she grew, these emotions would effect or take part in her own life and so therefore, the possibilities are endless to what she could observe and take from this experience.
Kao
AHHH! ok this is awesome! I wish I had been like Carrie and Pina and viewed people in this way at a younger age. I recently am working on a piece in comp III where I am attempting to reflect people. One of the things I did was sit in the Union Grind and simply watch people. I watched people eating, talking, walking, doing homework, anything and everything. I did this for about an hour with a note book writing down what I saw. Now I am 21 years old and I think it would be odd/social unacceptable to overtly watch people, or even to hide and watch them. I'm not ready for that kind of judgment by "normal" people or non-dancers. I could see how if Pina was able to do this at a young age, openly watch people and to do this for more than an hour...wow no wonder her works so brilliantly capture what it means to be human. In our discussion of Pina in class I know we talked about how her process in creating dance is focused a lot on the dancers she works with and what they come up with. I think she shapes the outcome with some of the questions she poses and in the repetition she invokes but how much of her ideas come from her life experience and how much is from her dancers? This is more of a hypothetical question then one that needs to be answered, because I don’t know if there can be a clear cut answer. It was just something I was wondering.
ReplyDeleteTasha
Tasha,
ReplyDeleteI think your comment is really interesting, especially in the point you bring up about the concept of watching people. I think it is interesting how as we grow older, we create a sense of awkwardness around ourselves about watching people when as children, it is completely natural. I recently learned about a neuron in the brain that are called "mirror neurons". They are neurons that aid an indvidual's activity by watching other people (for example, the way dancers are able to watch a teacher do a phrase and then dance the phrase themselves). I think this can also give an explanation to how the more we surround ourselves around certain individuals, we take on their habits and characteristics a little. For me, it seems that Pina is so independent that she is able to invoke her sense of childlike curiousity and innocence as an adult, while remaining extremely complex and intense at the same time. Her need to create dance trumps any awkwardness she feels about growing older and judgement anxieties, a very admirable quality and inspiration for me.
Kym
Tasha,
ReplyDeleteI agree, it is AHHHawsesome. I also find that synergy of you reading about Pina's experience with public observation and your current project about people to be very interesting. It makes me wonder about how people act in all sorts of situations. Personally, I know when I walk through the Union I think about what I 'should' look like. How I would like people to perceive me. This is very different when I walk through a park completely alone. It might be of interest to you to observe people in all different situations. Also, I believe that Pina had a dark and pessimistic point of view. We, as people, have all experienced this feeling of darkness. Many times, Pina wanted this in her work and order to capture this she helped guide her dancers to tap into their own personal memories/feelings in order to bring out this feeling in an honest way.
Kym,
The "mirror neurons" you mention sound fascinating. I think that Pina used these neurons to see the physicality within a person when they are in a particular state, be it anger, happiness, ect. It went beyond physical and into emotional. She was able to help push her dancers into these states of physical emotion, not just mimicking emotion. I agree, she is a woman of great inspiration!
-Brenna