Back to Wuppertal with Pina Bausch (in English)

Pina, by Wim Wenders : Is this theater, dance, or just life? I had to watch it one more time, with a new friend, and there might be a third time again after this. Each time I watch the documentary Wim Wenders made on Pina Bausch and the dancers of the Wuppertal Tanztheater, the level of emotion raises as I catch more details. How they loved her, how they miss her. Dancers from all over the world have come together to create an art that is truly global yet so genuinely German, in the « second-half of the XXTh Century » meaning of the word. Some sequences are extremely hard, like the moment that best captures the de-humanizing forces a woman is submitted to, in a terrifyingly emblematic way. The female friend who watched the movie with me first talked about rape, then she added : « in fact it is even more general than rape, this is what people expect of us, all of us, women or men, and what we accept : to become an object ».

Says Pina : « where words end, this is where dance begins ». And where dance begins, the unspoken, the unacceptable becomes visible.

Says one of the dancers : « meeting Pina was like finding a language, finally ». A language she created, with an extremely precise vocabulary and an immense power of emotional expression. A language we feel like we’d been waiting for all this time to express what we feel, what we are made to feel. What we didn’t know we were feeling, and what it feels like when we forget to feel.

Says Pina to the dancer : « you just have to get crazier ».

Then, there is the magic of the German language. It takes two or three French and English words to translate « Gefühl ». Feeling? Sentiment? Ressenti? All of the above. But why translate anyway? Just watch and shiver. When was the the last time you got the goose bumps while watching a movie, let alone a documentary?

Café Müller : says the French woman : « the stage was empty, and she said, we need chairs », and there you go, « pof les chaises ».

I like « pof les chaises ».

Then there is Wuppertal and its flying tramway, where Wim Wender captures a hilarious sequence with a dancer, a giant pillow and the sondtrack. This is the Germany we love : modern, contemporary, open to the world and I do not mean just the world’s money (sorry, London).

Then there is longing, in German : « Sehnsucht ». What are we all longing for? Just to be more human, whatever the price. Look for it. Buscando. Animo e movimiento. Joy, alegria. Love.

Dance for love.