In 2007, the choreographer Pina Bausch was awarded the prestigious Kyoto prize. Her acceptance speech was a rare moment when she talked publicly about her work – and, even more unusually, her life. Under the theme of What Moves Me, she spoke about her parents, her teachers, her collaborators, her dancers. She described the impact of the death, at the age of 35, of her partner Rolf Borzik and later meeting Ronald Kay, a poet and professor of aesthetics and literature at the University of Chile, with whom she had a child.
She went on: “Since 1981, the year in which our son Rolf Salomon was born, we have been living together in Wuppertal. After having to experience how a person dies, I have now been allowed to experience how a person is born. And how one’s view of the world changes as a result. How a child experiences things. How free of prejudice it looks at everything. What natural trust is given to someone. In general, to understand: a human being is born. Experiencing independently of this how and what is going on in your own body, how it is changing. Everything happens without me doing anything. And all of this then keeps flowing into my pieces and my work.”
Salomon Bausch smiles faintly as I read this passage to him over Zoom. He is sitting in his office in Wuppertal, the city in which his mother lived and worked for more than 30 years, and he is gently sticking to his intention to talk very little about his childhood, his father, or his mother on a personal level. “I am happy to be part of that positive,” he says, enigmatically. “I think it speaks for itself.”
Yet despite his reticence, there can be no doubt of the depth of his commitment to preserving Bausch’s legacy ever since her sudden death in 2009. Whatever his birth gave her in terms of inspiration and understanding, he is repaying by devoting his life to keeping her flame alive as founder of the Pina Bausch Foundation. “I felt a responsibility,” he says. “In the moment when Pina passed away, I felt I had to contribute something to making her work go on.”
Pina Bausch was one of the most significant and influential 20th century dance-makers. From 1973 onwards, working with her own company of dancers on more than 40 productions, she forged a style of Tanztheater, a mixture of dance and theatre, which tackled the great themes of human existence through movement that is both beautiful and visceral, highly complex and yet often apparently simple.
Her early pieces, such as her definitive version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on a stage covered in brown peat, were step-based, and have been danced by ballet companies. But her later pieces relied on the contributions of her dancers, a tight and committed group, who through an intricate process provided the material from which she wove works that operate like tapestries of hope and suffering, happiness and sorrow, violence and loveliness. Her pieces are much imitated but never bettered.
Bausch’s influence extends far beyond the dance world and her own lifetime. Whenever a group of women strut in silk dresses across a landscape, or a couple argue about nothing, or surreal moment of beauty punctuates a bleak setting, people think it owes her a debt. Like Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, she created a world that became synonymous with a particular viewpoint. Like them, she grew up in the second world war and was shaped by the experience.
What is extraordinary about her work, however, is that although in the early days performances were punctuated by the sound of people flipping up their seats and shouting abuse as they left, now they are widely appreciated. The quiet German city of Wuppertal where she spent most of her life has become a centre of pilgrimage for people who want to glimpse her genius; the design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, creators of major cultural projects including the redesign of Moma in New York, has just been chosen as the architect of a new Pina Bausch Centre on the site of the now-closed Schauspielhaus.
“I witness how many people are moved by Pina’s work,” says Salomon. “It happens in so many different parts of the world. There must be something really, really special about it that it gets somewhere so very deep.
“I am particularly interested in those moments where people don’t know about Pina. In Wuppertal, for example, the people who come expect to like it. They know Pina is an important figure and so they get up and clap. But that is a habit, also. It is dangerous in a way. I’m curious to see people who don’t know anything about Pina get in touch with her work and how they react.” One of the “most crucial and delicate things to achieve”, he says, is the preservation of the humanity at the heart of her work. “People don’t want to see great choreography. They want to see human beings; they want to connect to them.”
Now in his 40s, Salomon had just finished a law degree when his mother died and was about to start a doctoral thesis on “the right of assembly” as part of his plan to become a civil rights lawyer. But within two weeks, he had left his legal studies behind and set up the Pina Bausch Foundation, to defend and preserve her work.
“There was no plan in place for somebody to do this. I try to contribute what I can. I think it’s helpful that I’m not a dancer or choreographer, and that’s how I can probably be in charge of asking the right people and putting ideas and people together.”
He is talking as Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch arrives at Sadler’s Wells to perform Vollmond (Full Moon), premiered in 2006, and full of mystery and water. The company is now run by the French choreographer Boris Charmatz, who is introducing more new work to the repertory while simultaneously reviving Bausch’s originals with a new generation of dancers.
“Vollmond is an important piece to Pina’s repertoire and to us,” Salomon says. “It is one of her younger pieces and very much linked to the people who created with Pina, the dancers who brought all their own vocabulary, and a way to move. It’s very individual in that sense; not a piece that’s easy to hand on. But it is important for us to be collaborating with Tanztheater Wuppertal to transmit those roles to new dancers. The last time it was danced in London [in 2013], there was only one dancer who was not in the original cast. Now it is the other way around.”
The changes at Tanztheater Wuppertal – Charmatz is the sixth director since Bausch’s death – has made the work of the foundation even more important. It holds the rights to her works and while the home company remains its key partner, Salomon recognises that as new works are commissioned, Bausch’s own creations will be seen less often. So the foundation is expanding the number of companies that dance some of her most important works. “Provided it is well done, of course,” he adds. “But we don’t want Pina’s work to become less visible. If it’s not practised, it will be forgotten.”
Its initiatives have included a powerful touring version of The Rite of Spring with specially recruited dancers from across Africa; more recently, a group of students from the Taipei National University of the Arts has been touring Taiwan with the work. The choreography is always taught by approved coaches who have worked with Bausch. The foundation has also been holding “repertory workshops” where dancers can learn a particular solo or part of work – just to give dancers the opportunity to explore the Bausch style. “It is really important for their life as a dancer to have this experience,” says Salomon.
The other part of his ambition is to create a rich archive of material that documents all Bausch’s creations, through old footage and memorabilia but also by interviews with her key collaborators down the years. The site, available free to everyone online, is already a treasure trove of photographs, films and conversations, which not only give insight into Bausch’s distinctive working methods but also conjure the mood of her creative process. They offer a snapshot of the Lichtburg, the former cinema where she rehearsed, where everyone sat around amid a clutter of costumes, cigarettes and coffee cups, and saw no separation between their lives and their work.
Flicking through the archive, you understand the absolute devotion Bausch commanded. The dancers who worked with her down the years and who continued to dance – distraught though they were – for her after her death were like an extended family. Dancers remember Salomon playing in those spaces when he was a small boy; before he went to school, he used to travel with the company. “Sometimes now I meet people, and they introduce themselves saying they have met me, and I’ve never met them. But I know who they are,” he says, with that slight smile.
He has vivid memories of the music that Bausch used – and the sensory impact of Peter Pabst’s sets. “I saw rehearsals and performances a lot, so it always felt very natural to me. One thing I remember strongly is the lawn on stage in the piece 1980. I remember entering the theatre and having the smell of the grass. It was something I really loved. That smell is a very deep memory.”
With his round glasses and shock of dark hair, Salomon looks like a grownup and more sophisticated Harry Potter; he speaks gently, but with conviction and a certain intensity. Despite his immersion in Bausch’s world, he never imagined being part of it – “I don’t know why.” Even now, he prefers a night at home more than a visit to see a different dance company. His interest in dance is tied up with his dedication to the foundation, where his work is a constant voyage of discovery. “Even if it’s a piece I know well, it’s always different to see it. There’s a discovery every day, I would say.”
It must be sad too, I suggest, watching his mother dance in blurry black and white, when she is no longer around. “I think it is a great gift for me,” he says, simply. “I can discover many things – and also even if it’s not something new, if I see a piece I can feel something of her. I think that’s a big privilege I have.”
Pina
This documentary by Wim Wenders was planned before her death and filmed in 2010 after she had died. Wenders had wanted to cancel the project, but the dancers convinced him to proceed as planned, as a memorial to Bausch and her choreography. It makes an excellent introduction to her work, and to the city of Wuppertal, including extensive excerpts from key works such as The Rite of Spring, Café Müller, Kontakthof, and Vollmond. Available to rent on AmazonPrime Video and YouTube
Café Müller
One of Bausch’s key pieces – to the music of Purcell and inspired in part by her upbringing in her parents’ cafe – this performance was recorded in August 1985, and features Bausch herself dancing alongside Malou Airaudo, Dominique Mercy and Jan Minařík, all founder members of Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal in 1973, and Nazareth Panadero and Jean Laurent Sasportes, who joined in 1979.
One Day Pina Asked … (also known as On Tour With Pina Bausch)
A documentary film by the Belgian film-maker Chantal Akerman, made in 1983, following Pina Bausch and her dancers on tour, recording them at work as a new piece, Nelken (Carnations), finds its final shape. It also contains excerpts from Kontakthof and 1980.
AHNEN Ahnen/Rehearsal Fragments
A film Bausch made herself, which hasd lain unwatched in the archives for someabout 25 years, this loosely structured documentary goes behind the scenes on rehearsals for her work Ahnen. Filmed on cheap cameras and concentrating only on what Bausch was interested in, it provides a remarkable insight into the atmosphere in which Bausch she worked. SC
All available to stream via pinabauschfoundation.org
Sometimes the archive provides inspiration in serendipitous ways. Meryl Tankard, who worked with Tanztheater Wuppertal from 1978 to 1984, has recently created a piece called Kontakthof: Echoes of ’78. This puts archive footage of the original – and seminal – production of Kontakthof, set in a dance hall, alongside the performances of nine of the original dancers, returning to their roles in a profound conversation between past and present. (It will arrive at Sadler’s Wells in 2026.)
For Salomon it was “the most beautiful” way of incorporating archival material into a new creation. This linking of a seminal history with a vibrant contemporary presence is exactly what he is trying to achieve – and sometimes it takes a personal form. “Just yesterday, Meryl sent me a photo she had found of me and Pina which she had taken so that was also nice to discover.”
He smiles again. It must be a big responsibility carrying a legacy about which so many people have so many views? “Of course,” he says, laughing. “Of course I worry. But I also see beautiful things emerging and I hope some more will come.” How does he cope with all the conflicting advice he receives? “I take the best and leave the rest.” It must require a lot of wisdom. “Well as you know, Salomon is my middle name. I always listen to what people say. It is not possible to make everybody happy, or just do what they say. But that is something I appreciate a lot because the basis is a feeling of responsibility from people who have a sense of responsibility to something they experienced.
“Pina’s work is so accessible because you don’t really need to know anything; you can just experience it. There is such potential in her work. That’s why we want to share it.”
Vollmond runs at Sadler’s Wells, London EC1 from 14 to 23 February
