My patience with the cult of Pina Bausch is wearing paper thin. She was taken from us 16 years ago, and I had hoped that the aura of divinity around her memory might now be fading. But no, it only burgeons and having joined with Terrain Boris Charmatz to honour her creations, the official keepers of her flame Tanztheater Wuppertal are back in town to present one of her later works, Vollmond (‘Full Moon’), to ecstatic standing room-only congregations in her temple at Sadler’s Wells. What a bad, bad influence the Blessed Pina has had on dance, providing inspiration for hundreds of her imitators to pull the wool over our eyes by peddling their own pallid versions of her formulas.
With an intolerable duration of well over two hours, Vollmond contains many of her familiar tropes, and then some: a set consisting solely of a large, immovable stone boulder against a black background; downpours of rain cascading from the flies forming a shallow pool in which the cast frolic, splash and slide; outbursts of frenzied emotion and nonsensical spoken monologues lacking what T.S. Eliot described as an ‘objective correlative’ or reasoned connection to anything else; tediously repetitive rituals that involve odd noises or pointless rules; men running at great speed across the stage into the wings, women floating about in ballgowns and stilettos; a lot of panic, a lot of robotic parading, a lot of discarding of clothes. No relationships or continuities are established; the principle seems to have been to give rein to the first thing that comes into the performers’ heads, a surrender to instinct and the unconscious.
Magazine articles are subscriber-only. Get your first 3 months for just $5.
SUBSCRIBE TODAY- Free delivery of the magazine
- Unlimited website and app access
- Subscriber-only newsletters
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in