Last Wednesday two of the three live pooches that appeared in Pina Bausch’s Viktor did onstage what most dogs do when in a state of arousal. The incident, which elicited a great deal of audience laughter and repressed giggles on stage, would have amused the late Bausch. First seen in 1986, Viktor was the first of the many city-specific works that Bausch created and on which the current World Cities 2012 retrospective (at Sadler’s Wells and the Barbican) focuses. Viktor’s rhapsodic and episodic narrative comes from the theatricalisation of memories each member of the Tanztheater Wuppertal had of their experiences in a particular location.
Viktor is about Rome, though not the Rome one sees in travel books, postcards or holiday snaps. Bausch had a special relationship with the Italian capital, one of the first European cities to host regular seasons of her work. Viktor, therefore, is Bausch’s own tribute to Rome, but a tribute that never glosses over its darker facets.
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