ABSTRACT
In modern dance you can count on the fingers of one hand the choreographers who have changed the territory. Martha Graham is one, Merce Cunningham is another, Pina Bausch is a third. But, while Graham and Cunningham developed a style that could actually be taught – that remodeled the training of dancers as well as opening new windows for choreographers – the influence of Bausch is different. There’s no specific technique that can be labeled Bauschian – there are no Bausch classes. Yet her influence on the dance profession has been huge. It is impossible to enumerate the hundreds of works over the past 20 years whose bleak Weltanschauung, skewed narratives and selfconsciously bizarre stagings have screamed their indebtedness to Bausch.
