Film: "Dance Dreams - Teens dance "Kontakthof" by Pina Bausch"
Ring Auditorium, Hirshhorn Museum
Washington, DC
December 1, 2010
by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson
The late Pina Bausch never appeared in Washington nor, so far, has her still surviving company. Once again, it was the Hirshhorn Museum's film series and not a dance presenting agency that gave people here the chance to keep current and make up their minds about Germany's most praised Tanztheater choreographer. I often found Bausch's choreography insufficient as theater and dance despite being fascinated by her 1978 "Cafe Mueller", succumbing to her power as a performer and being intrigued by her mind. My first encounter with that mind, or rather sensibility, was years ago when I invited a mutual friend, Carl Wolz - her fellow student at Juilliard, to see the Living Theater and he brought Pina along. It turned out to be her first avant garde experience in New York. Afterwards, while Carl and I talked and talked, she was intensely quiet. In this "Dance Dreams" documentary, too, Pina Bausch concentrates, observes and often seems to remain private, steeped in thought. This was the last film made of her.
Bausch doesn't appear until halfway through the film, which focuses on German teenagers participating in a project to learn and perform her dancetheater piece "Kontakthof" ("Contact Court", also from 1978). About 40 young people have enrolled. It is with unobtrusive skill that the film makers - Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann - and the two Bausch dancers who teach and rehearse "Kontakthof" - Jo Ann Endicott and Benedicte Billiet - set the kids in context and pick a few to follow in detail. The young people are typical and individual, they are from German and immigrant families living in an urban industrial landscape - presumably the Ruhr Valley's city of Wuppertal with its cable cars.
There are no dance classes. All the takes are either of actual rehearsals and of coaching sessions (often highly emotional ones), or of the kids interacting and, briefly, going about routines - such as commuting on the cable cars, just walking somewhere or relaxing (playing ball in cemented courts). While engaged in the mundane activities, they comment on their lives and their participation in the Bausch project. The statements they make have the effect of private thoughts coming to the surface of consciousness and being expressed, not as responses to being interviewed. A few of the kids are street smart, a few others seem predominantly shy, but most show a mix of savvy and innocence. Their dance experience comes from watching television and doing hip hop. Not many, if any, have had formal dance training.
The main task of Endicott and Billiet is teaching the actions and emotions of "Kontakthof" so that they seem real experiences and not routines to the teenagers doing them and become legible, convincing events to an audience. In demand is both actuality and artistry - a combination which no one in the film ever questions. Like much of Bausch's oeuvre, "Kontakthof" is a sharply stylized collage of actions taken from life and of related feelings that are either contained or expressed. The actions and feelings concern such topics as relationships, sexuality, suicide or struggle - things the teenagers think about and are just beginning to explore. How does practicing, trying to perform and experience the "Kontakthof" behavior and emotions as real influence the actors? Endicott, Billiet and Bausch do not delve into this question but the film makers seem to have asked it. The young people's answers appear to be positive - they say they have gained, that they have learned things, everything from being more confident to getting better grades at school. I wonder.
I also wonder about the basis of the emotional/artistic coaching being given. While the teachers want real and extreme feelings, the cast is also asked for drillwork, timing and "more plie". Is there classwork we are not being shown? If there isn't, might it not help - not just technically but in modulating and projecting the emotions? In one scene of "Kontakthof" a couple undresses. It turns out the performers are virgins and are disrobing in public for the first time. What did they experience? Or did they put their feelings on hold?
Definite are the teachers and Pina Bausch. Endicott and Billiet engage with their students enthusiastically, vividly, committedly. They keep just enough distance so that instruction can be given and that segregating the participants into soloists or corps and first or second cast doesn't seem like a betrayal of trust. Bausch, who comes to see some of the advanced rehearsals and makes the final casting decisions, remains more aloof. Although she asks the teenagers to relax in her presence and assures them that she doesn't bite, and despite knowing that they don't fully understand her ranking in the world, Bausch's concentration and rigorous simplicity are more than personal manners. Her behavior signals her importance.
What does the film do for Pina Bausch? Is it tangential? Or is it excessive, spoiling the purity of her collage's stylized form? Does it supplement some of her work's lacks? The film shows "Kontakthof" only in fragments. We are spared repetitions (both the significance of reiteration and the ennui) and in no way does the film convey the stage work's course and cumulative impact. We certainly are given insight into the lives of Germany's teenagers as well as peripheral information about contemporary Germany. But is the film's picture of teenager sincerity and teacher committment an exercise in sentimentality? Or is such human interest added to the Bausch enterprise in an attempt to compensate for her neglect of movement development and organic growth? Certainly, the image of Pina Bausch's singularity shown on screen contributes to her legend.