Without a doubt the greatest European choreographer of the second half of the twentieth century, Pina Bausch showed bodies like no other. Between theater and dance, Bausch invents a new form. Each element becomes a gesture: beating, hair, cloth.
If Bausch preferred the ascetic anonymity of the black Yamamoto for herself, she made daring use of clothing on stage. In The Rite of Spring, ample black trousers; then, from Café Müller onwards, wide shirts, drooping shoulders, morning trousers.
With Kontakthof begins a focused reflection on the suit. Often double-breasted and charcoal grey, Bausch turns men’s clothing into a set of gestures: undoing a knit tietie made of wool, cashmere or silk threads which are twisted, tying one’s shoes, doing the inner button of one’s jacket, tucking in one’s shirt, loosening one’s belt. Tails, heeled loafers, poulaines, a boiled-wool admiral’s coat.
Bausch looks for breaking points: waists, screams, ankles, cries, wrists, flights. Battered waistcoats, rolled-up sleeves. Braces and round lapels, dry bodies and ample signs.
Shortly before her death, Pina Bausch chose to stage Kontakthof at a secondary school. Most of the boys had never worn suits. One of them confesses: “My body is too big for me”. Pina Bausch offers this vast fitting room: mending one’s body like a suit, one’s suit like a body.
Adolescents dance. Kontakthof 2008
Bamboo Blues. 2007.
Café Müller. 1978.
Costume worn by Dominique Mercy. Kontakthof. 1978.
Costume worn by Jan Minarík. The Second Spring. 1976.
Kontakthof. 1978.
Poster for Nelken. 1982.
Tanzabend-II. 1991.
The Rite of Spring. 1975.
Poster for Bandoneon. 1980.
- INNER POCKETS« They are designed to meet the needs and habits of the wearer, evolving over time to accommodate changing lifestyles. »
- STRIPES: PIN, PENCIL, CHALK, AND ROPE« A variety of the ‘pinstripe’ often found in shirt cloth but rarely in suit cloth is the ‘pencil stripe’ »
- “I’M GONNA KILL RON GALLELA” – ELIZABETH TAYLOR« celebrities are too ready and not enough: borrowed suits, out of touch and out of place »
- JAMES BALDWIN« clear, lucid, and familiar, yet punctuated and powerful »