Wiesenland/Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler’s Wells - review

The month-long festival of Bausch comes to an end with this piece inspired by the folklore, museums and churches of Budapest
Lyndsey Winship9 July 2012

Something strange has happened. When this month-long Pina Bausch fest was first mooted — 10 long shows in four short weeks from the late doyenne of radical German dance theatre — I was sure the intensity of such an undertaking would lead to a serious case of Pina fatigue (symptoms: bodies slouched in seats, muffled snoring, polite theatregoers quietly banging heads against walls). But as the shows wore on, it seemed that the opposite was true. The more I saw, the more I wanted to see. It was like being slowly indoctrinated into Pina’s cult.

Bausch’s work rests on ritual and repetition, and for anyone who was in for the long haul, watching the work became a ritual itself, a part of life. And for all those moments of bafflement, bewilderment, “eh?” and “WTF!”, that’s all that Bausch was showing us: life. In this final show, created in Budapest in 2000, she returns again and again to our most basic actions and desires — eating, bathing (a lot of bathing, it is Budapest after all), the need for human contact. The essential stuff, really.

The show’s most dramatic moment comes midway, when the vast mossy crag that is the show’s backdrop descends to become a vivid green Tellytubby meadow. Sadly, crag aside, Wiesenland lacks those real holy-moley moments that make Bausch’s work so pungent. There are some lovely scenes — tablecloth-pulling tricks at a communal dinner; couples slow dancing in the dewy grass — but the season ends by floating off into the ether rather than with a wham-bam finale, not with revelation but with what is now a reassuring familiarity. We’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch ends tonight (0844 412 4300, sadlerswells.com).

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