Philippine "Pina" Bausch (27 July 1940 – 30 June 2009) was a German dancer and choreographer who was a significant contributor to a neo-expressionist dance tradition now known as Tanztheater. Bausch's approach was noted for a stylised blend of dance movement, prominent sound design, and involved stage sets, as well as for engaging the dancers under her to help in the development of a piece, and her work had an influence on modern dance from the 1970s forward. She created the company Tanztheater Wuppertal, which performs internationally.
Philippine Bausch, later known as Pina, was born in Solingen, Germany, on 27 July 1940. Her parents were August and Anita Bausch, who owned a restaurant with guest rooms, where Pina was born. The restaurant provided Pina with a venue to start performing at a very young age. She would perform for all of the guests in the hotel and occasionally go into their rooms and dance while they were trying to read the newspaper. It was then that her parents saw her potential. These experiences at the restaurant would be a great influence for her choreography of Café Müller.
In 1955, Bausch was accepted into Kurt Jooss's Folkwangschule in Essen.
After graduation in 1959, Bausch left Germany with a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service to continue her studies at the Juilliard School in New York City in 1960, where her teachers included Antony Tudor, José Limón, Alfredo Corvino, and Paul Taylor.
Bausch was very soon performing with Tudor at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, and with Paul Taylor at New American Ballet. When, in 1960, Taylor was invited to premiere a new work named Tablet in Spoleto, Italy, he took Bausch with him. In New York Bausch also performed with the Paul Sanasardo and Donya Feuer Dance Company and collaborated on two pieces with them in 1961.
In 1962, Bausch returned to Essen to join Jooss' new Folkwang-Ballett (Folkwang Ballet), as a soloist and assistant to Jooss. In 1968, she choreographed her first piece, Fragmente (Fragments), to music by Béla Bartók. In 1969, she succeeded Jooss as artistic director of the company.
Her 1968 piece for the Folkwang Ballet, Im Wind der Zeit, took first place for choreography in a competition at the International Summer Academy of Dance in Cologne in 1969. She continued to collaborate with the Sanasardo Company, showing some of her choreography in the United States, through which she met Dominique Mercy and Malou Airaudo, who would become founding members of her company.
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch
Bausch was hired by Arno Wüstenhöfer, director of the Wuppertaler Bühnen, Wuppertal's municipal performing arts organization, to run the Opernhaus Wuppertal ballet beginning with the 1973/74 season. Bausch was given artistic autonomy, ran the company independently and renamed it the Tanztheater Wuppertal. The company has a large repertoire of original pieces, and regularly tours throughout the world from its home base of the Opernhaus Wuppertal. The company has continued since Bausch's death, touring her repertoire and new choreography.
Bausch faced substantial initial criticism after taking over as director of the Wuppertal Ballet in 1973. The audience in Wuppertal were more used to traditional ballet repertoire like Swan Lake, and found the themes and movements of Bausch's works violent. The audience often threw tomatoes, walked out of performances, and sent Bausch threatening letters. Critics also often commented on the jarring repetitive movements Bausch used to depict the abusive men/women relationships. American critic Arlene Croce famously described Bausch's work as "pornography of pain".
Her best-known dance-theatre works include the melancholic Café Müller (1978), in which dancers stumble around the stage crashing into tables and chairs, to arias by Henry Purcell. Bausch had most of the dancers perform this piece with their eyes closed. The six dancers continually lift, drop, and chase each other. The thrilling Frühlingsopfer (The Rite of Spring) (1975) required the stage to be completely covered with soil.
In 1983, she played the role of La Principessa Lherimia in Federico Fellini's film And the Ship Sails On.
The Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch made its American debut in Los Angeles as the opening performance of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival.
In 2009, Bausch collaborated with film director Wim Wenders on a 3D documentary, Pina, but died suddenly two days before the shoot was due to start in June 2009. After consultation with her family and company dancers, the film went ahead, documenting her life and work in a different way. The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2011.
Bausch's approach was noted for a stylized blend of dance movement, prominent sound design, and involved stage sets, as well as for engaging the dancers under her to help in the development of a piece. Her work, regarded as a continuation of the European and American expressionist movements, incorporated many expressly dramatic elements and often explored themes connected to trauma, particularly trauma arising out of relationships.
The term "dance theatre" (tanztheater) can be traced back to Rudolf Laban's theories. While Laban used the phrase in comparison with movement choirs, he didn't specify the content of dance theatre. It was his students such as Kurt Jooss and Mary Wigman who further developed their own theories regarding tanztheater. Having Jooss as a teacher and mentor, Bausch's pieces were largely influenced by the German expressionist dance tradition of Ausdruckstanz. Her pieces were simple and rejected the classical forms of ballet. The dances generally had little to no plot, no progression, and no sense of a specific geographical place.
When studying in New York, Bausch sought influence from Martha Graham, José Limón, and Anna Sokolow. These American influences can be seen in Bausch's choice of gestures and phrasing. For example, a defining characteristic of Bausch's work is the continuous repetition of movements, as seen in Rite of Spring
Male-female interaction is a theme found throughout her work, which has been an inspiration for—and reached a wider audience through—the movie Talk to Her, directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Her pieces are constructed of short units of dialogue and action, often of a surreal nature. Repetition is an important structuring device. She stated: "Repetition is not repetition, ... The same action makes you feel something completely different by the end." Her large multi-media productions often involve elaborate sets and eclectic music. In Vollmond, half of the stage is taken up by a giant, rocky hill, and the score includes everything from Portuguese music to k.d. lang.