Dance freaks should rush all ceaseless business to Dancing Pina. The documentary makes the big difference, between the Semperoper of Dresden and the School of sands of Dakar. Directed by Florian Heinzen-Ziob, it is one of the most exciting moments of dance that we can afford. The purpose: follow by crossing the transmission of two works by Pina Bausch.
In Dresden, Malou Auraido revives Iphigénie en Tauride on dancers from the Semperoper. The atmosphere is that of an opera with dancers from ballet schools, mirrors and vast studios. In Dakar, Josephine Ann Endicott revives The Rite of Spring on dancers from all over Africa brought together here by Germaine Acogny. This takes place under a tent open to the four winds. The linoleum creases and is shaded with red sand. The dancers, at best, did some street dancing. The girls say they dance against their family’s wishes. “My mother wanted me to quit. A woman here must marry, have children and take care of her ancestors. It is the prostitutes who dance,” says one of them.
The genius of this documentary is to stage this question that has lasted since Pina Bausch signed her first pieces: “What is Pina Bausch? How to dance his ballets, how to merge our gestures in his research? Over the course of these two hours of film, which pass like lightning, the question, carried by the dancers and the coaches, sharpens from movement to movement. Without ever being elucidated. It is up to the viewer to form an opinion. We are exactly in front of the process used by Chrétien de Troyes to write Perceval or the Tale of the Grail.
We go from one place to another, from one character to another. The scenes do not repeat themselves. They define the question, always differently, always further. In this story, two main characters. Malou Auraido and Josephine Ann Endicott. Malou created Iphigénie in 1974. Jo Ann, Le Sacre, in 1975. Almost fifty years with Pina Bausch have forged character. The first is compact, square, even a bit gruff. The second is all in delicacy, but always on the verge of lecturing. She frowns, like an infinitely patient schoolteacher. Their common point is that they are dissatisfied.
As well as all the repeaters of Pina who pass in the repetition. It never goes. The shoulder must land first, the movement must be organic, the arms staggered. You have to start over and over again. The name of Pina is invoked, an invisible but indisputable divinity. In the head of the dancers it works. In Dresden, Sangeun Lee finds herself too big, too clumsy, too concerned with repeating learned forms instead of living the piece. How to let the work take it, how to let oneself be changed by it? In Dakar, a dancer gets greedy. She has to stop her morning jog by the sea. She no longer has enough energy for Le Sacre. A boy asks: “This Sacre is a ritual. But you don’t have a ritual. Should we dance it by opening the door of trance as we do in African rituals?
Between these questions, sublime images. Iphigénie en Tauride was born when Pina arrived in Wuppertal. It is a major piece, from the same water as Orpheus and Eurydice. The Rite of Spring is brought to incandescence by these dancers who throw themselves into it body and soul. Beauty at the top.
The opinion of Figaro: 3.5/4
