Title: …como el misguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si…
By: Pina Bausch
Location: Tanztheater Wuppertal, St. Poelten, Austria
Date: Oct 23, 2015
In Attendance: Soeren Walls

Dance is often too abstract for me to grasp from a critical perspective. As an actor, when I watch a dance performance, I usually feel like a stargazing geologist. I don’t know a single technical thing about the entire field. All I can say is, “Wow, that’s beautiful.”

This performance was different. Lucky for me, Pina Bausch transcends dance in the traditional sense by integrating a lot of theatrical techniques into her pieces. In particular, I want to talk about her use of repetitive physical motion, an effective non-verbal technique that theatre and film directors tend to forget. Unlike dance, in these artforms, the primary faculty by which we convey thoughts and emotion is of course speech. But other faculties, like motion – or the lack of it – can be just as effective, if not moreso.

A woman quietly crawls on stage. Two men run after her. She reaches center stage just before the men lift her from under her arms. She screams, pants, and flails her limbs as they carry her, tip-toe-ing, to a corner of the stage. They set her down and she becomes silent. Repeat x10.

That was the introduction to the performance, and a perfect example Bausch’s physical playfulness. Here’s another:

A woman is tied to one end of a rope by her neck. The other end is tied to a wooden post in the corner of the stage. Like a dog trying to escape its leash, she sprints back and forth around the post, panting and sweating. Simultaneously, a man shimmies back and forth along a horizontal rope that stretches above the opposite corner of the stage. We see the woman reaching her arms out hopelessly toward him as she struggles.

You may notice a pattern of intensely laborous physical exercises. Also futility. These were both themes present throughout the performance. Such motifs might lead audiences to believe Bausch has an agenda in her work; one central message she wishes to drill into the audience’s minds through endless repetition. On the contrary, I almost never found myself thinking about the artist’s intention. Instead, continuous observation of the same act again and again tends to make you question your first impressions; to ask yourself what you really think about what’s happening on stage. Every time an action is repeated is an opportunity to self-reflect. Also, not every instance of repetitive motion in the performance matched these themes. For example:

Roughly thirteen women wearing white gowns and holding gray pebbles pace slowly around the stage. Each woman, according to her own rhythm and timing, stretches one arm above her head and slowly bends backwards, straining. Like the neck of a flamingo, her arm glides backward and downward, and just before her hand touches the floor, she releases the pebble from her grip, followed by a sudden, loud collision with the floor. She curls her body upright, rotates to face the pebble, and bends over to pick it up. Repeat x10.

This repetitive action is perhaps futile, but certainly not laborous. It requires flexibility, not strength or stamina.

It’s worth noting that another non-traditional technique Bausch uses in her dance pieces is speech. Yes, actual talking. Even singing at times. It’s used sparingly, often in multiple languages, and rarely makes a lot of sense, but it’s almost always funny. However, despite the use of speech in her pieces, the non-verbal communication – the physical movement – always tends to make the most sense. Yet in theatre, we are often so focused on verbal communication that we forget how effective other means of communication, like physicality, can be. Makers of theatre should strive to make more use of it, and lovers of theatre should strive to appreciate it more.

~ Soeren