Pina bausch

Swings between violence and comedy: Pina Bausch’s Kontakthof, at Sadler’s Wells, reviewed

When you take in the richness of a Pina Bausch production — the redolent staging, the eloquent, eccentric twists of the choreography — it’s everything and it’s something. Kontakthof, created in 1978, sounds the bell of hopeful passes and freighted expectations, centuries of hearts on the line, desperate to elude solitude. A keystone of her back catalogue, the piece illuminates the convoluted, often rotten thrusts of human desire, with special emphasis on women’s vulnerability in the dating game. A gramophone pipes out vintage love songs as the ensemble to and fro across a dance hall in Bausch’s standard-issue suits and gowns. The title — a reference to the area of

Vigour and verve from a unique new Rite of Spring: Dancing at Dusk reviewed

Dancing at Dusk captures the final rehearsal of a new version of Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring. It’s only the third time a company other than Bausch’s own has been handed the reins to this piece, and it’s a treat to see its raw, convulsive rhythms reinterpreted by a new generation of performers. Filmed on a beach in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal, it features a cast of 38 dancers from 14 African countries, assembled to bring a fresh lens to Bausch’s 1975 cult classic, itself a modern reckoning of a decades-old ballet. (Bausch’s original famously underscores the misogyny of the sacrificial virgin, doomed to dance herself to death.) This collaboration