Since Pina Bausch’s death 15 years ago, the peerless German choreographer’s company Tanztheater Wuppertal has been beset with speculation about its future. The persistent question is not merely how to keep the flame of her uncanny dance-theatre burning but how to transcend the art of revival (no matter how meticulously undertaken) and push forwards, by combining her singular vision with those of new choreographers.
Bausch’s 50-odd creations are predominantly potent enough to escape categorisation as museum pieces anyway. But Boris Charmatz, who has led the company since 2022, has served up a daring new treatment of her 1978 masterpiece Café Müller which delivers and deconstructs the 45-minute piece. Charmatz’s adventurous framework for Forever honours the spirit of her sprawling later works while also satisfying the Avignon festival’s appetite for epic event theatre. Over a seven-hour period, Café Müller is presented six times, by changing casts, with half-hour interludes in between that allow the dancers to offer their memories of Bausch, present isolated sections of her choreography, and share new movement material. Viewers are invited to watch from the beginning or to join at three later time slots.
The audience line the walls of a vast, initially empty performance space where, to begin, Tsai-Chin Yu emerges alone as Bausch’s enigmatic somnambulist figure: arms outstretched, palms upturned, eyes closed. We hear her breath and she hums a few notes from Dido’s Lament by Purcell. It is a gentle first sensation of the refrains and gestures that haunt the piece.
The floor fills with activity as dancers emerge en masse, carrying brasserie chairs and round tables, placing them with the ritualistic exactitude of waiter service. There is the characteristic Wuppertal range of ages on stage; double-breasted suits are worn but so is sports gear. A plunge into darkness, then the glow of a dozen criss-crossed strip lights above, and Bausch’s carousel of endurance begins with Naomi Brito and Letizia Galloni each stumbling and sleepwalking through the maze of furniture, suppliant yet dangerous, chairs whisked from their paths out of fear, care or both.
Bausch’s pieces are marked by explicit cruelty, sometimes wrought by the imposing figures played by Michael Strecker. Here, he is cast as the mysterious sombre gent lifting one partner (Galloni) into the arms of another (Simon Le Borgne) only for her to fall to the floor, with the routine repeated, faster and faster. Is he fixing the couple’s relationship or forcing it? Is she being laid to earth, as in Dido’s libretto, by this grim reaper – only to awake and desperately cling to her lover?
These agonising encounters gain in complexity and universality with each new cast. The scene in which a man and a woman take turns slamming each other into a wall is heightened in the later performances by the stains left behind by the previous dancers’ hands. Bausch was drawn to unbreakable cycles of behaviour – there is no suggestion of resolution even after six performances of Café Müller, let alone one.
The horror is spiked with offbeat comedy, provided in the part originated by Nazareth Panadero who shares that role with others here. In a tender interlude, remembering Café Müller’s creation, Panadero reflects on the red wig, lipstick and heels required, walking us through the part – literally so, as she adopts her trademark skittish run. The character’s insistent bid to be kissed is also brilliantly done with sweet yearning by Tsai-Wei Tien in the third version of Café Müller.
Héléna Pikon played Bausch’s role at Sadler’s Wells when the choreographer fell ill in 2008 – the last time Café Müller was done in London – and she reprises it here in the fourth telling, alongside Charmatz. In the first of the interludes, Charmatz combines the Strecker role with that of a directer, placing a dancer in the other’s arms, judging the effect. It is as if we join their rehearsals. Elsewhere in these fragments, another original performer from 1978, Jean-Laurent Sasportes, finds connection with the chairs alone. Frank Willens, who joined the company last year, crawls out from under the audience to discuss the business of taking over a part originated by another dancer.
One row of the stage-level seating brings a visceral proximity to the dancers whose personal revelations and reflections are akin to those in Wim Wenders’ 2011 film tribute to Bausch but also match the intimate tone of her text-heavier works. Also in the mix here are the libretto from Purcell’s The Fairy-Queen, achingly sung live by Julien Ferranti, and a narrated text about Bausch by Hervé Guibert when he was a journalist for Le Monde – a generous appreciation of the critic’s role during a festival where, this year, Angélica Liddell made headlines for lambasting a review during her performance.
Bausch’s original has a concentrated power and Charmatz’s concept risks a sense of dilution but the accumulative effect, even with the temporary release of the new material in between, grows intensely emotional. Bausch will always own this establishment yet Charmatz has transformed Café Müller into a meeting place for old friends and new faces, offering an enthralling stocktaking of the company’s past and future.
At La FabricA, Avignon, until 21 July. Chris Wiegand’s trip was provided by Tanztheater Wuppertal.
