Please believe that I try to give every production my full attention, to do due diligence, to blink and miss nothing. But when, halfway through Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch’s Since She, one of the male dancers appeared on stage with cowbells attached to his willy, I’m afraid I spent a fair few minutes looking hard at my notebook.
The cowbells are not the strangest thing in this night of the grotesque. Since She is both danse macabre and Grand Guignol. A woodchipper whirrs at the back of the stage, the set is a mountain of mattresses. One man sniffs a sausage, another turns a spit. A woman defecates into an omelette, another is dragged across stage with wine glasses balanced on the fan of her hair. A man kneels on all fours in his boxer shorts, while his partner stands on his back on a chair.
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