Choreographer: Pina Bausch
Pina Bausch’s Kontakthof is a seminal performance piece that needs to be seen. Whether it needs to be seen for three solid hours is possibly worth debating: it is certainly a feat of endurance for the audience, with some question as to the value of the experience.
The phenomenon of semantic satiation, when a word is repeated so often it is drained of meaning, is a key concept for Pina Bausch. Gestures are repeated and repeated, until their original significance – erotic, violent, tender, dismissive – becomes a shadowy memory. Dancers stand up and fall down time after time; a procession of performers crosses the stage making identical gestures, and the procession comes round again and again. It’s hypnotic and frustrating, and forces the audience to re-assess what dance is.
Some of the movements are graceful, beautiful even – the 11 men all wear baggy grey suits, the 11 women wear slinky, rainbow coloured silky gowns (designed by Rolf Borzik) and often look fabulous – but the grace and the beauty become as irrelevant as the slaps and the falls. There’s gurning, too. Lots of bits of dialogue in a multitude of languages, and lots of exaggerated facial gestures. Pina Bausch wasn’t afraid to ask her dancers to venture into areas of performance dancers don’t usually visit.
Why should audiences not only put up with this, but welcome it? It is a hugely influential piece of performance art, that has been commented on, developed, referenced many times, and it’s good to know what those references mean. It is challenging in a good way: what does that gesture mean? How do people meet each other?
Kontakthof roughly translates as ‘Hall of Meetings’, and contact, both benign and malign, is a central theme. It is weirdly funny: when one of the dancers (Julie Shanahan) starts a movement and barks at the other 21 to join in, they all do join in but get fed up and go and sit back down, leaving the initiator barking orders to herself until she notices she’s alone. It’s a very grim, somewhat German joke, but a joke nonetheless.
Midway through the piece, a projector is brought onstage and a badly filmed super-8 nature film about ducks, with English commentary by Richard Wilson, is projected for audience and dancers, all of whom drag their chairs to the front of the stage providing a view of performers backs and grainy ducklings. That’s quite funny, especially two hours in to a very demanding show.
It’s an important piece. It’s a challenging piece. It’s a long piece. It’s on for another three nights.
Runs until 6 February 2022
