Last Updated on May 6, 2026
“When you create a new work, the point of departure must be contemporary life – not existing forms of dance.” – Pina Bausch
Modern dance (much like modern art) can be polarising and intimidating. We all have an idea what classical music is supposed to sound like and what classical ballet is supposed to look like and when confronted with something that defies these conventions, we may feel we lack a frame of reference for evaluating or enjoying it. But choreographer Pina Bausch’s work taps into such innate human emotions and rhythms as to be accessible even to those who do not fancy themselves fans of modern dance.
Pina Bausch (who died in 2009 at the age of 68) was a revolutionary figure in the world of dance, known for her unique choreography which blends of movement and theatrical elements. Born in 1940 in Solingen, Germany, she trained at the Folkwang School in Essen under Kurt Jooss, a pioneer of German modern dance and moved to New York in the 1960s to study at the Julliard School. With the cultural revolution of the 1960s in full swing, Bausch was exposed to a vast range of new and emerging dance philosophies and styles which shaped the direction of her development. She returned to Germany and set up her own dance company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, in 1973. Her work seems to follow on from the German expressionist dance form Ausdruckstanz of the 1920s and is often on a vividly imagined grand scale: for Nelkin, the entire stage is covered with carnations; for Arien, it is covered in water.
To have Bausch choreograph Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is, in many ways, a perfect match of musical and theatrical sensibilities. Much like Bausch, Stravinsky was a revolutionary in his time. The 35-minute score was originally composed for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company and the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky. The score has a significant grounding in Russian folk music but is known for its experimentation with dissonance, rhythm, changing and unusual metre, and shifting key signatures. At its first performance, the audience was so flummoxed by the score that arguments and scuffles broke out in the auditorium about the merits of the piece. To this day it remains one of the most influential and recorded pieces of classical music ever written.
The theme of the evening’s programme is that of exchange, more specifically the exchange of ideas and collaboration between Pina Bausch’s Wuppertal Tanztheater and Ecole des Sables, a dance school in Senegal. The first half of the programme is a performance of common ground[s], a new work created, performed and inspired by the lives of two remarkable women: Germaine Acogny, founder of École des Sables and widely regarded as the mother of contemporary African dance; and Malou Airaudo, a former soloist in the Pina Bausch Company and also later also a professor at Bausch’s alma mater, Folkwang University. At 80 and 76 years old respectively, both dancers have long careers to look back and draw on but had not met before working on this piece. In the poetic and tender performance of common ground[s], their two destinies and dance traditions intertwine in a sensitive and moving duet that examines their shared histories and emotional experiences.
As the stage gradually lights up the silhouette of the two seated women is revealed, against the backdrop of what resembles an African dawn. Throughout the piece, the lighting is used to greatly evoke moods and define spaces on an almost empty stage. In an industry and a world obsessed with youthfulness, it is refreshing to see two older dancers so at ease in their bodies and so confident in their abilities with nothing to prove to each other or the audience. Dressed in simple black dresses, they represent their shared dance journey through a series of scenarios – here, they seem to be rowing across a body of water; elsewhere, they resemble two birds fused in flight. When they move together, they move as one form; but when they separate, it is Acogny who is simply mesmerising in the sharpness and precision of some of her movements and the sinuous flow of others. The score is spare, leaving the audience to focus rather on the emotions evoked by the dance. The piece ends with the women once again seated as they were at the start, but with the slow, rhythmic stamping of Acogny’s foot as if to represent the passing of time.
The second half of the programme is the Rite of Spring, a historic collaboration between the Pina Bausch Foundation and the Ecole des Sables. The piece features Bausch’s 1975 choreography but is danced by a company of 34 dancers from 13 different African countries (and a tremendously varied range of backgrounds and techniques), many of whom trained at Ecole des Sables. The stage is unadorned other than for a dark brown square made up of 3,060kg of peat which is brought in for every performance in steel bins and painstakingly raked. This is what the 30-minute interval is used for and it is worth foregoing interval drinks to watch the process. Once the performance starts, this square of soil delineates the dancers’ performance. Over the course of the piece, the dancers’ bodies and costumes gradually accumulate more and more of the dirt, adding to the physicality of the performance. The dust-to-dust opening and closing scenes that book-end the piece are also given extra impact by this unusual staging.
The narrative of the Rite is based on a vision that came to Stravinsky of a pagan Russian society where, to ensure the arrival of Spring, a young maiden is selected to dance herself to death as a sacrifice to appease the gods. Bausch’s choreography strips the piece of references to the Russian countryside and instead has an earthy, tribal and distinctly primal feel to it. There are no traditional tutus, tight buns and satin ballet slippers here. All the dancers are barefoot, the girls in plain slip dresses and the men shirtless in black trousers. The scene opens with lighting that echoes shafts of light filtering through trees in a forest, showing us glimpses of a girl sleeping on a red cloth spread on the peat while others dance alone or in pairs – but this is the extent of any peaceful bucolic scene. As the score’s rhythmic and pounding theme plays, the girls dance in unison in a tight group, their movements strong and precise with fists reaching up and plunging to their solar plexus; their arms audibly slapping against their bodies like self-flagellation; their plies as sharp and spiky as the unexpected peaks and troughs of the musical score. Throughout the 35-minute performance, there is an anxiousness and febrile energy to their movements, whether dancing in unison or flitting across the stage as if fleeing an unseen enemy. The arrival on stage of the men, shirtless and confrontational, does nothing to calm dramatic tension.
For much of the performance, the men and women dance in their segregated groups and if you are looking for a tender pas de deux, you will be disappointed. The threat of violence and coercion is never far below the surface in the behaviour of the men towards the girls. The only times where couples dance even momentarily together are a dizzying scene where the girls rush frantically across the stage and each launch themselves in turn onto the men’s shoulders; and later as the company dances dramatically in a circle together when for a moment, each girl tenderly embraces the man in front of her. The circle dance is one of the highlights of the performance, and it is both hypnotic and atavistic.
The red cloth that opens the performance remains on stage throughout and is periodically passed from girl to girl and sometimes fearfully discarded on the dirt. The ever-present undercurrent of foreboding and fear is clearly visible on their faces, and at one point the girls stand and shake as if having a seizure, literally paralysed by fear. The final part of the narrative starts with the arrival on stage of the sage (a man, of course) who eventually chooses the sacrificial maiden. He indicates his choice by dressing her in the red dress which has been on stage since the start, and the stunned look of visceral fear on her face as she is unwillingly pushed/dragged to centre stage to commence her final dance is devastating. Senegalese Khadija Cisse gives a gut-wrenching performance as the sacrificial maiden, both strong and vulnerable. Many of the movements from the first dance that the girls do together are repeated in her fatal final dance with poignant and desperate urgency before, exposed, alone and exhausted, she collapses face down in the dirt of the stage, closing the circle of her journey.
This production is a great introduction to Bausch’s work and themes and is profoundly moving in its emotional intensity and sheer physicality. Despite the music being over 100 years old and the choreography nearly 50 years old, there is a freshness and relevance to this Rite of Spring and it resonates deeply in the current climate of sexual politics. At a time when women’s right to control their bodies is under increased threat in many parts of the world, a piece where men choose a girl to sacrifice her body and her life retains extraordinary relevance and the ability to deliver a gut punch.
When the production’s original plans to tour in early 2020 were cut short by the Codiv-19 lockdown, the company filmed a final rehearsal for the Rite of Spring near the Ecole des Sables campus on a beach in Senegal. This exquisite film can be viewed for free on the Sadler’s Wells digital stage until 29th November, and in some ways provides an even more intense experience of the dancers’ expressions of emotion. If you missed the Rite of Spring’s current sold-out 5-night run at Sadler’s Wells in London (6-10 November), I highly recommend watching this.
Whether you are a seasoned dance enthusiast or new to the art form, this piece is sure to leave a lasting impression.
Sadler’s Wells
Rosebery Avenue,
London,
EC1R 4TN
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