Caught the movie "Pina" in the Colonial Theater in Bethlehem, New Hampshire (now there's a town to visit - more about Bethlehem later!)
The movie, made by Wim Wenders, is about the German dance choreographer Pina Bausch. Wenders set out to make a documentary about her work three years ago, just before she died very suddenly and unexpectedly of lung cancer, so what was going to be a celebration of the work of a living artist has become a eulogy.
And her work is breathtaking: extraordinary, provocative, witty, beautiful and ugly. Many of the dance sequences in the movie are set in surroundings that contrast sharply with the flowing garments and brilliant colors of the dancers who move through their dream world of emotional and sexual intensity oblivious of traffic and trains. Humor erupts in the form of a dancer with rabbit ears travelling on a public monorail, or a dancer clad in flowing dress and ear muffs brandishing one of those awful hand held leaf blowing machines.
That last sentence illustrates that an artist or performer never knows what aspect of their work is going to connect with the audience: I happen to have a particular antipathy for those awful hand-held leaf blowing machines but I don't suppose either Pina Bausch or Wim Wenders knew that!
The eulogic aspect of Wenders' work is enshrined in short spoken sequences which are memories of Bausch recalled, fresh from the shock of her death, by her dancers, some of whom worked with her for decades.
To my eye, every one of the dancers featured was beautiful, and in this situation, every one of them was tragic. Modern dancers are a sub-set of Homo sapiens, with their slender bodies, etiolated necks and dreamy eyes. In the spoken sequences, each was filmed alone, head and shoulders only, with their words spoken as commentary, the visible face not speaking, just looking unspeakably sad and pensive as their memories of their mentor drifted by on their inner movie screens.
"Pina" didn't satisfy those of my friends who wanted a biography of the choreographer, but factual questions can be answered by a quick Internet search and the experience of the movie itself was not a narrative but a transcendently strange and beautifully animated collage.
Catch it if you can!
http://www.pina-film.de/en/about-the-movie.html
PS: "Pina" is available in 3-D but the Colonial doesn't rise to that!
Julia, yes! We have been watching it in Julian's front room a few times... and of course each time it comes to the Duke of Yorks too, in "glorious" 3D. The great thing is that I now have a place in the Three Score Dance Company, Brighton's own Company of Elders... we are in the middle of a four-day commission with a choreographer. I'll tell you more soon... Jan
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