Posts Tagged ‘Pina Bausch’

DanceNOW Festival at Joe’s Pub

Thursday, September 6th, 2012

Adam Barruch’s I Had Myself a True Love had my vote as the winner of the DanceNOW Challenge at Joe’s Pub. On September 5, Barruch’s competition was nine other choreographers. Just like a prime-time dance competition, the sold-out audience was invited to judge and pick a favorite. The challenge for the artists was to create a work in under five minutes for the tiny cabaret stage that makes, in the words of producer Sydney Skybetter, “a clear concise artistic statement.” The odds were tipped toward Barruch. He was the only choreographer with two works on the program. Last year he was a DanceNOW winner. This year his new hyper-expressive solos to recorded music sung by Barbara Steisand opened and closed the hour-long evening at the smartly renovated Joe’s Pub.

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“Pina,” Wim Wenders’ 3D Dance Film

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

“You just have to get crazier.” These words came from Pina Bausch, the late choreographer, whose dance troupe made the industrial city of Wuppertal, Germany an avant-garde theatrical destination for 36 years. In Wim Wenders’ 3D documentary “Pina,” screened on October 15 at Alice Tully Hall for the New York Film Festival, audiences got a taste of what Bausch’s crazy looks like. In one scene, a Bausch dancer walks through a park in a floor-length dress like a zombie queen. The woman careens to the ground, flat as a board. Right before smashing her face, her suitor scoops her up like a crane lift. Then she falls again, and again. The effect is part amusement ride, part suicide watch.

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