Rudolf Rach on the way forward for Pina Bausch’s dance theater | EUROtoday

If I say sure now, then I do not need to seem as a clairvoyant. But Pina Bausch will not be an remoted case on the earth of inventive heritage. A couple of years earlier than her demise, as her writer, I sat together with her in Paris and requested her: Pina, what about re-enacting the items? Using “Café Müller” for example, we mentioned whether or not it was doable to carry out the work with a special set and completely different solid. After three hours she mentioned: “Somehow you’re right.” But that was all that got here of it. Understandably, she struggled to interrupt away from her personal conception, the genius of which is clear to anybody who sees the work with any of the early casts. But that falls quick. Pina Bausch has constructed a creative world empire. In the top, she died unexpectedly rapidly and left no will. That’s the issue.

Her son grew to become the only inheritor. Overnight, Rolf Salomon Bausch, a regulation graduate, discovered himself accountable for a theater world with out being ready for it. One can simply think about how others now tried to claim their pursuits. On the one hand, there have been – understandably – the dancers. They performed a key function in growing the items and embodied them – within the true sense of the phrase. There was town of Wuppertal and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. A weak theater administration, already the results of fragmentation, discovered itself uncovered to those forces, all of which tried to make the empire serve their pursuits. Pina Bausch had led this empire clearly and strictly. Now that management was lacking and the entire thing was at risk of falling aside.

For years, the ensemble seemed that it was paralyzed by grief.

Well, that is too sentimental for me. The ensemble naturally felt an important loss as a result of the central star was immediately not there. But the ensemble’s pursuits have been clear: it wished to proceed taking part in, with out competitors; it’s all too human that it wished to reap the harvest and profit from its simple efforts. The dancers wished to proceed taking part in and never have competitors come up anyplace on the earth. The reasoning was apparent: “Nobody can do it as well as us. We have something that the others don’t have.” Dominique Mercy wasn’t the one one who thought that.

Just like throughout Pina Bausch’s lifetime. The Tanztheater Wuppertal was the one firm that carried out their works, apart from a couple of items corresponding to “Sacre du printemps”.

That’s true, however it may be defined by calls for that have been justified from the viewpoint of the intense artist Pina Bausch; as a result of she actually left nothing to probability, however relatively managed every part, noticed each efficiency after which criticized it. I’ve by no means met a director who took this effort and confirmed such depth in coping with his personal work. That’s how she was. Nevertheless, she had a weak spot: she really believed that every part could be over after her demise. At least in terms of the dance theater she created. If she had been proper about that, she might have launched her work for reenactment. And if not her, then her legacy. To say that every part can be over after my demise is a mistake that many individuals have already made. To assume that there is no such thing as a one on the earth who might re-stage a play by Pina Bausch is solely nonsense.

At least Pina Bausch had overcome one hurdle throughout her lifetime. Little by little, the unique solid needed to be supplemented or changed by new casts.

That’s precisely how it’s – and whether or not you prefer it or not, it is yet another argument for what I’ve already mentioned. When I began at Suhrkamp within the Seventies, there was the identical downside with the work of Bertolt Brecht. Helene Weigel, his heiress, sat there in East Berlin and mentioned the others could not do it. After her demise the scenario eased a bit, however no extra. When Klaus Michael Grüber staged “In the Thicket of Cities” on the Frankfurter Schauspiel, the piece was hardly recognizable as a result of the whispered textual content remained incomprehensible from starting to finish. Even although each phrase was spoken, the viewers didn’t perceive him. But Grüber was an excellent stager, and what was seen on stage was utterly consistent with the spirit of the Brecht play. The dialogue with Brecht’s heirs was adventurous. They should ban it, they requested me, and I answered: “What should I ban? The spirit of the piece is respected, the actors speak the text; you don’t understand it, but that’s up to the theater management: they have to decide what they can expect of their audience. In any case, a ban would have been very difficult from a legal point of view and would have been completely artistic stupidity. Back to Bausch: Who can explain why there is no one in the world who has the talent (and therefore also the… moral and aesthetic justification) to stage one of her plays?

What is Rolf Salomon Bausch’s position, what is he allowed to do?

He can ban everything and make everything possible. This is guaranteed by copyright. We, that is, the publishing house L’Arche in Paris, which represented the rights to the pieces, received a lot of inquiries after Pina Bausch’s death. The most famous and beautiful, the largest and most influential theaters from all over the world came forward to play a piece by Pina Bausch. Everything has been rejected. Copyright gives heirs enormous power. Today we could have performances of Pina Bausch’s plays on many stages around the world, which would have increased her fame, would have also promoted the reputation of the city of Wuppertal worldwide and would have been a positive for German culture as a whole. Everything has been destroyed by this narrow-minded, faint-hearted local politics.

Again about Brecht: In his case there is a text that he wrote, and the text is the legacy. And then there is the staging. In Pina Bausch’s dance theater, text and production cannot be separated from each other.

Objection. The dramatic text is something different from the production, but in principle the aesthetic problem with dance theater pieces is exactly the same. You don’t necessarily have to read, you just have to be able to see and hear. That’s why I started recording the pieces with their original musicians in the 1980s. To arrive at a visual-acoustic score. This material is now owned by the Pina Bausch Foundation. You could make the material available for study purposes. Compare the videos to a musical score. Just as there are people who can read scores, there are others who can “read” a recording; who are able to be inspired by it and to implement what they see and hear “according to the work” – that is the copyright term – on stage. However, if the dance theater in one of the rare external rehearsals – I’m thinking of the production of “For Children of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” in the Munich Opera – demands for every dancer that “the one that performs me should additionally appear like me!”, that is grotesque and becomes very expensive. How this has been handled in Wuppertal since the death of Pina Bausch is wrong from A to Z. I came into close contact with the work because one day the Wuppertal theater management called and said, “Ms. Bausch wish to have copyrights. But the theater is of the opinion that she has no proper to copyrights. A report from the stage affiliation confirms this.” Of course I was completely taken aback and said: “What? Pina Bausch does not get any copyrights? That’s probably the most authentic factor you possibly can see far and large in Germany.” That was 1981.

So did Pina Bausch first turn into a Suhrkamp creator?

Yes, we enforced their royalty claims worldwide and then started recording tracks. “Bluebeard” and “Café Müller”, but also others, because Pina Bausch pushed for the “originals” to be documented. This was not easy to finance because, apart from exceptions, the ÖRR showed no interest in it. In addition, Pina Bausch was a foreign body at the Suhrkamp publishing house from the start. Nobody can imagine that today. My colleagues said: Yigittigitt, what is that? What does dance theater do at Suhrkamp? One of the reasons I wanted to become independent and run my own publishing company. Pina then decided to go to Paris with me. In agreement with Siegfried Unseld, who correctly assessed the situation.

So what could be the most effective answer?

The best solution would have been if, after her death, individual theaters around the world – I emphasize, worldwide – had been given the opportunity to rehearse certain pieces and to combine this with the hint: to hire one or two members of the company to advise before and during rehearsals and to help in the event of an emergency. Because the work is solid. If someone is interested in it, one must assume that they do not want to destroy the work, but rather want to carry it into the future with enthusiasm and conviction.

Because it is usually our German dance and theater historical past.

An important point of view that was overlooked. People in Wuppertal believed they could achieve this by founding a Pina Bausch Center. This is how cultural administrators think. If such centers are to make a difference, they need creative and independent minds, and that’s not exactly what they’re looking for. Germany did very well to have produced such an artist after the war. And the reputation of Germany and Wuppertal would have been further promoted if the work had been staged worldwide. In this way the legacy could have been saved. Instead, the whole thing is slowly evaporating in Wuppertal and the surrounding area. It is becoming smaller and more modest.

What measures could possibly be taken now?

I’m afraid it is too late now. That the passion of the theater world has evaporated. I warned the inheritor about this from the beginning. Theater is a fast-moving medium. If items should not performed, if a piece will not be mentioned, will probably be forgotten. I’m utterly amazed once I discuss to individuals who not know who Pina Bausch was. The most vital theaters on the earth wished to carry out her performs, proper after her demise. That was sixteen years in the past now, and the playing cards have since been reshuffled. You must attempt to stimulate curiosity to find theaters which might be keen to get entangled. It’s not with out threat, however with out daring willpower the work has no future. It goes over the Wupper.