Culture

Glimpse of dancers' world

By Wendy Qian (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-19 08:05

Dancers perform during Bamboo Blues, a piece about the sensual battle of the sexes. [Photos by Gert Weigelt / for China Daily]

Some unusual props seen during Legend of Chastity, one of Pina Bausch's representative "tanztheater" works.

Performers react during Legend of Chastity, which was choreographed by Pina Bausch.

Legendary German choreographer remembered through multimedia event at 798, Wendy Qian reports

Last year, on June 5, legendary modern dance choreographer Pina Bausch passed away. During her heyday as a director and choreographer for Tanztheater Wuppertal, her works added theatricality to dance, establishing a new form called "tanztheater".

In remembrance of Bausch, the Goethe Institute and the Iberia Center for Modern Art have multimedia exhibition, Absolut Pina, in the heart of Beijing's art zone, 798.

Bausch would ask her dancers to create minidramas through their memories, because she was not interested in how people move but in what moves them.

Her method for creating dance pieces has produced marvelous results such as The Rite of Spring and Caf Mller. Her absurd and surreal episodes inspire artists, shock audiences and are imitated in theaters around the world.

Photos, documentaries and dance videos that capture her eternal moments and visions are now on display at the Iberia Center. Documentaries such as Dancing Dreams and With Ladies and Gentlemen over 65 and dance videos are showing.

During the premiere of Dancing Dreams, the theater was packed and many in the audience stood to watch it. After the premiere of each film, Chinese and German cultural figures shared their thoughts on Bausch with the audience.

Invited by the Goethe Institute, the esteemed dance photographer Gert Weigelt, who visited China for the first time, exhibited 18 of his works that are related to Bausch.

Even as a former dancer who has been fascinated by Bausch's works for more than 30 years, Weigelt resists defining her works in simple words.

"Even if you asked Pina to define herself when she was still alive, she likely would not have answered with a specific message or theme she wishes to present [through her dance piece]. Still, if you watch her pieces, you could find countless meanings that she has accumulated," Weigelt said.

Weigelt strives to develop new angles and visions to capture Bausch's fluid expressions.

Weigelt understands that he is "re-portraying" or "re-presenting" an art through his camera lenses. He believes in order to present photography as artwork, to some extent, "you have to distance your creation from the subject" and reorganize what you have observed.

To Weigelt, documenting Bausch's dances through photography is different from documenting through video not just because the former is two-dimensional while the latter is three-dimensional. They are also different "in the sense that video emphasizes the documenting side of the content, it shows the event truthfully, whereas when you use another media to process the subject in an artistic way, you are not only recording."

Weigelt said that in order to keep his photographs from revolving around Bausch's aesthetic standards, he never asked Bausch which one she likes or dislikes.

"It's my conscious effort [to avoid doing so], because artists have their own standards and views on creating," Weigelt said.

He publishes his photos individually. At times when his works are needed for publicity, Weigelt communicates directly with the publicity departments of Tanztheater Wuppertal.

Weigelt said he believes that people from different cultural backgrounds can still easily appreciate Bausch's pieces.

The 67-year-old said he believes that his past experience as a dancer has helped him photograph performances. He said that when watching a performance, a former dancer can sense when the next movement will happen and where the next movement will lead the dancer, which is a great advantage for a performance photographer.

"Once you've been a dancer, you will become much more familiar with the musicality of the movements. You feel the breathing vibe between each movement, and you understand the energy included in the dancer's movements," Weigelt said.

This is especially important for photographing Bausch's pieces because they are less about technique than the energy and emotion, he said.

Dance photographer Gert Weigelt stands in front of his portrait of Pina Bausch.

Dance choreographer Pina Bausch.

(China Daily 07/19/2010)