Pina Bausch

Published on Thursday 2 July 2009 20:51

Choreographer

Born: 27 July, 1940, in Solingen, Germany.

Died: 30 June, 2009, in Essen, aged 68.

SHE was a towering, if controversial, figure in post-war German ballet and Pina Bausch's influence stretched across Europe to many US dance companies. Her pioneering vision of how dance theatre should be seen on stage was picked up by radical theatre and film directors such as David Alden and Robert Wilson, and choreographers – William Forsythe and, notably, the company DV8.

There was an intensity surrounding a Pina Bausch ballet that audiences either accepted or were astonished, even horrified, by. She seemed to go out of her way to want to shock her dancers and her audiences. She was obsessive throughout the rehearsal period with her company – the Wuppertal Tantztheater – and insisted on total artistic dedication to the project in hand. But her dancers loved her and the challenges she gave to the company. Her innovatory style has been hailed as among the most pioneering of the 20th century.

Her ballets – or spectacles – are brutal creations of man's isolation from his inner emotional self. Bausch is uncompromising and violent, polarising an audience from the outset. She shocked audiences by the apparently punishing lengths to which she drove her dancers into performing fantastical moves and images.

The great French ballerina Sylvie Guillem commented after creating a work with Bausch: "You work for her. I think it's like joining a cult."

This was evidenced at all the visits the company made to the Edinburgh International Festival. The first, in 1978, was successful and the company built up a good relationship with a section of the Edinburgh audience some years before it was established in London. The 1978 visit was Peter Diamand's last year as artistic director and the Bausch Company made what was described by one critic as "an auspicious first visit to Britain".

The final programme consisted of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, which concentrated the action of the sacrifice on the ballerinas. At the highly dramatic ending – the sacrificial girl is virtually lynched on stage – Bausch had all the ballerinas' bodies smeared in earth and mud. It caused a sensation.

By the time of their next visit, in 1992, the company was becoming hailed throughout Europe – although London still proved somewhat lukewarm. After the 1992 visit the London critics started to become enthusiastic and, significantly, when the new Sadler's Wells Theatre was reopened in 2000 the company was among the first guests.

The 1992 visit was not, however, without its controversies. The one ballet given in the King's Theatre was Caf Muller and Bausch herself appeared on stage as a childlike ghost, sleepwalking through the caf rejecting all advances. Bausch threw herself into a man's arms repeatedly, only for him to let her slip to the floor. Some cheered to the rafters. Others booed, left at the interval and demanded their money back. Bausch was certainly neither conventional nor dull.

In 1995 Bausch brought to the vast Playhouse Nelken, with scenery by Peter Pabst. The stage was completely covered in plastic carnations while Alsatian dogs patrolled around its edges. Dancers rubbed raw onions on their faces and moved among the audience. Bausch contrasts fun with reality and authority. Audiences were fascinated and infuriated by its ambiguity in equal measures.

Her last visit was at the invitation of Brian McMaster in 1996 to direct and design Guck's Iphegenie en Tauride.

Philippine Bausch trained with the choreographer Kurt Jooss, best known now for his expressionist anti-war ballet The Green Table. She won a scholarship to study in New York, and worked with a range of companies, especially with the English choreographer Anthony Tudor. She returned to Germany and set up her own company which gradually gained an international reputation. From 1974, she collaborated with the set designer Rolf Borzik, whom she married.

Bausch has increasingly been accepted as a major force in dance theatre. For all that, she seldom spoke publicly, and stubbornly refused to let her works be seen except when danced by her own company.

Bausch undoubtedly made audiences uncomfortable – there was an emotional jarring about her works that was decidedly unnerving. But she was fearless and imaginative and brought to the surface some heartrending truths.

Bausch wrote in a programme note to the 1992 Edinburgh Festival visit: "'Basically one wants to say something which cannot be said, so what one has done is make a poem where one can feel what is meant. When it comes to making a piece, there's nothing you can hold on to. You always start off again with nothing. In this respect, one never learns anything."

Bausch died five days after being diagnosed with cancer. Her husband died in 1980 and she is survived by her son.