We are there, we are at Pina’s. For the moment, all is calm. The board is empty. The walls are painted gray and white. A slightly dirty white, like the panes of the high window on the left, which will soon allow slanting rays of opaque light to pass through. A row of chairs is lined up against a platform concealed by a brown curtain. Microphone stands are placed here and there. This old-style party hall resembles the Lichtburg, a former cinema that became the rehearsal studio of Pina Bausch (1940-2009), in Wuppertal (Germany), and has been preserved in its own juice since the end of the 1970s.
This “house” is that of Kontakthof, masterpiece of the German artist, programmed until December 31 at the Palais Garnier, in Paris. Created in 1978 – we pinch ourselves to believe it as its acid greenness and crazy audacity seem to have just emerged from its smoking brain – the piece entered the repertoire of the ballet of the Opéra national de Paris. After The Rite of Spring, in 1997, Orpheus and Eurydice, in 2005, this evening at the dance hall, in the decor of Rolf Borzik (1944-1980), is the third opus by Pina Bausch that the institution displays. At the antipodes of the classic technique required by the two previous ones, the show investigates a series of nervous situations, stings with a theatrical vein on edge that pulsates quickly and beats hard. Suffice to say that the bet, for the dancers, as accustomed as they are to contemporary productions, promised to be disproportionate.
So ? Panache first. A slight tremor in the guibolles which, little by little, stabilize. On Friday December 2, the twenty-six performers – thirty-four in total to have been selected out of ninety-three – gained momentum, strengthened their gait in stiletto heels or lace-up shoes, as well as their long-term gaze. three hours of the play. The opening scene, during which everyone comes face to face with the audience, sticking out their torso or buttocks as if to check themselves in the mirror before parading around, sets the tone. It’s the market for the most beautiful to go dancing, the review of pretty hearts, the circus of seduction that Pina Bausch, formidable expert in male-female relations, sends flying with a flick on a roller coaster carousel. Want to get off the wooden horses? Too late, the lathe is just starting, and the machine is blocked.
Dating Trap
From the star Germain Louvet to Maxime Thomas, from Eve Grinsztajn, who will bid farewell to the company on December 31, to Letizia Galloni, via Héloïse Jocqueviel, Charlotte Ranson or Caroline Osmont, all are prancing around. They end up (almost) by making people forget the many images of the performers before, including those of the incredible Jan Minarik (1945-2022) here played by Matthieu Botto, impeccable. Because the photo album of Kontakthof is thick. In 1978, Pina Bausch imagined that the production could be resumed identically when the dancers were 65 years old. In 2000, she was 60 and slipped an ad in the Wuppertal newspapers to stage the show with fans over 65. is born Kontakthof, with ladies and gentlemen over 65, then, in 2008, a version with teenagers, immortalized by the film Dancing Dreams, in the footsteps of Pina Bausch (2010), directed by Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann, who popularized the play.
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