Accommodating the Threat of the Machine: the act of repetition in live performance

In [Pina Bausch’s] 1980, when Anne Marie Benati runs around the room fifty times calling out ‘I’m tired’ she finally gets really tired. Her movements, initially light and full of energy, gradually become slower, her weight more and more relaxed at each step, as if her limbs were becoming heavier by increasing passive weight; her breathing becomes intensified, and she can barely speak in the same tempo as before. The artificiality of the initial re-presentation, speaking what she was not feeling, becomes a real experience through mechanical repetition. ¹