Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch: Vollmond overview – glamorous, surreal and really, very moist | Stage

Tright here is a few absolute magnificence in Vollmond, one of many final items made by pioneering German choreographer Pina Bausch earlier than her demise in 2009. A curtain of water dramatically falls from the sky, shimmering within the mild, plumes of the stuff arcing into the air and crashing towards the large, monolithic rock that dominates the stage (designer Peter Pabst is nearly as a lot an creator of this work as Bausch). Water is a recurring theme in Bausch’s work and right here it rains down, spurts from mouths, is thrown from buckets and poured into overflowing glasses, inconceivable to catch or management.

Bausch’s different nice recurring theme is the infinite cycle of flawed human habits (Vollmond means “full moon”, extra cycles) and the facility play and pettiness between women and men. Her males are all the time well wearing shirts, her girls ever glamorous in spaghetti-strap robes and lengthy, swishing hair – craving nostalgically for a extra glamorous period whereas deriding its mores.

Vollmond appears at love, particularly courtship, ritual and flirtation, however it’s lighter than a few of Bausch’s different works and fewer biting in consequence. The cruelty, the bind that {couples} get themselves into, is performed down. There’s a variety of comedy. A girl balances a plastic cup on her head; a person goes to shoot the goal however his gun seems to be a water pistol. A few of it might be in any surreal skit present, as if Bausch had been Vic and Bob’s bizarre sister. There’s a really humorous scene about how lengthy it takes to undo a bra clasp. In some methods, that is Bausch at her most accessible (though, as ever, these repeating cycles go on longer than they should).

The mode of efficiency is all affectation; that’s simply the best way of Bausch – the never-quite-sincere smiles, the gnomic pronouncements, the odd, tightly choreographed behaviours. However, maybe counterintuitively, what by no means feels affected is once they dance. Then they’re unbridled, they’re absolutely themselves. Among the newer dancers of the ensemble are bewitching movers, Nicholas Losada and Maria Giovanna Delle Donne being two putting examples. When they’re solo, it feels unscripted – they’re free, and that basically is gorgeous.