Hommage to Pina Bausch

The German dancer and choreographer, Pina Bausch, passed away on June 30th, at the age of 68, announced the Wuppertal Tanztheater. She began her career as a dancer in New York. Four years later, she returned to her native country. She had been the head the of Wuppertal Opera dance company since 1973, during this time she choreographed more than forty pieces, including Café Müller (1978), Nelken (1982), Danzon (1995) and Nefes (2003), all widely and positively received.

She also worked closely with the cinematic world: she played a blind princess in Fellini’s E la nave va (1982), and Almodovar’s Hable con Ella (2002) featured long segments of her creations; in 1989, she explored a new role as director of her own film, La Plainte de l’impératrice.

She collaborated with Yohji Yamamoto in 1998, for the 25th anniversary of the Pina Bausch dance company in Wuppertal; to accompany her choreography, all the dancers wore Yohji Yamamoto clothing. For this performance, Yohji Yamamoto joined the dancers on stage performing karate. Yohji considered Pina as an inspiration, a muse: to him, she represented the perfect silhouette and movement reduced to the very essence of body and clothes. A whole Yohji Yamamoto collection was dedicated to her in 1990. They shared a very strong opinion and desire for “what cannot be seen”.

Wim Wenders, who worked closely with Yohji Yamamoto on the film “Notebook on Cities and Clothes”, was currently working on a dance film project with her. All of them, also including Bartabas, composed a kind of an artistic family, which has definitely lost one of its closest members.

 

Photos by Bernd Hartung