ABSTRACT
Bausch’s further development of Tanztheater comes from her base and training in German Expressionist dance, but is also linked to her interest in theatrical techniques. Without stopping to systematically apply any given theory, she incorporated ideas from her dance background and inherently drew on theatrical innovations, reinterpreting base operating principals for the stage as she erased boundaries between disciplines. Basuch’s work founds a developmental process to explore ideas of performativity and consider the body as central to performance presence. This section provides pivotal overviews that contextualize Bausch’s
work within the German Expressionist continuum. What is less well represented in the literature, probably because we lack any concrete referential data, is Bausch’s connections to the experiments of the 1960s in both dance and theatre. Although her work is not as clearly aligned with the American formalist stance in Modern dance developed at Judson Church, it does reflect the revolutionary spirit that buoyed the theatrical experiments of that era and led to reconsiderations of dance and theatre in Europe and America. Bausch was in New York City in 1961/62, and supposedly was aware of, if not witness to, the work of the Living Theatre. Her early work upon her return to Germany is not particularly theatrically engaged, however, beyond the influence of Jooss’s theatrical brand of dance, and the impact of her work in America with the more psychologically inflected ballet of Anthony Tudor and her connections to the expressive continuum within the Modern dance tradition. Her collaborators in the early years of her work with Tanztheater Wuppertal may have had more contact with that spirit, however, particularly her designer and partner Rolf Borzik. His approach to working within a charged environment that highlights real presence on stage echoes the 1960s experimental theatre derived out of the seminal ideas of Antonin Artaud. In piece
after piece before his early death in 1980, he moved Tanztheater Wuppertal towards an essentialist confrontation with the stage. Also often overlooked is the shaping influence of Jan Minarik, one
of the only carry-overs from the original Wuppertaler Ballet when Bausch took over in 1973 and renamed the company Tanztheater Wuppertal. Minarik participates in the first few dance operas Bausch creates at Wuppertal (based on Gluck operas, Iphigenie auf Tauris and Orpheus und Eurydice), but his influence really shines through as the company confronts the growing crises within its ranks and moves away from more dance centred pieces to create more theatrically developed work, specifically Blaubart, Kontakthof, etc., in the incredibly fertile period between 1977 and 1980. Minarik continued to develop his role within the company, standing alongside Dominique Mercy as one of the longest-standing and most inspiring company members, and established himself as a consistent theatrical component of the work, often playing the role of the outsider or master of ceremonies, calling up an odd assortment of presentational images in each succeeding piece rather than more developed “dance” sections. Borzik and Minarik provide a connecting link to the German thea-
trical tradition of Bertolt Brecht, and other more current theatrical experimentation, incorporating ideas from Artaud to Grotowski and Peter Brook. They help to place Bausch’s work in this early period, and continuing on throughout her career, within the spectrum of the Theatre of Images. But Bausch brings together theatrical and dance influences in a wholly original way, re-inventing the idea of performance presence. She begins with a process of exploration rather than interpreting a given text, constructs her theatrical images from questions she poses to her performers in rehearsal, and weaves together the results in narratives of association built on a metaphoric ground of dream logic. The result is a developmental process that moves away from dance based structures built on movement values and echoes the ensemble generated work of her contemporary theatre artists, Tadeusz Kantor and ArianneMnouchkine, and utilizes the same interdisciplinary building blocks as Meredith Monk and Robert Wilson. A full cataloguing of Bausch’s influence within and across the dance
and theatrical spectrum would include statements from the many artists who have acknowledged their debt to her work, including William Forsythe, Anne Theresa de Keersmaeker and Bill T. Jones (among many others) in dance, and Wilson, Anne Bogart, Robert Lepage and others in the theatre world. Bausch’s further influence has been incorporated throughout Asia as well, intersecting with Japanese traditions in the development of Butoh, and touching base with a resurgence and
extension of classical Indian dance forms. Various Asian modes of performance have always integrated visual, physical and narrative forms to create a replete presentational style that Bausch picks up on and contributes back to. This section provides the basis for understanding Bausch’s work within these contexts, but leaves much room for further exploration across disciplinary practice and within differing performance possibilities.
