ABSTRACT
Pina Bausch's choreographic process began as a means to an end, a simple way to create something for her to dance. Bausch's performance practice is built on a process of uncovering connections to fundamental ideas and feelings. Bausch inverts the priorities of process and product in her rehearsals. Bausch's work, however, starts with a base of ideas and feelings, whether derived from an open-ended question posed in rehearsal, or a structured source from which the developmental process emerges. Bausch's challenge and great innovation was to find a way to maintain a dance agenda through choreographic principles of construction while incorporating theatrical techniques of expressing individual subjective experience. Movement strategies are central to Bausch's work, with initial prompts more naturally derived from her performers' extensive background in dance practice. The introductory exercises establish a ground in simple presence in time and space.
