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PINA BAUSCH’S AQUA IS A LONG LOVELY DANCE TO THE GRATEFUL END
Imagine you’re on holiday in the tropics. Actually, you are in sultry, green, exotic Brazil. Generous palm trees sway in the breeze; the wind blows through the long lush leaves while you are wearing your favorite summer loungewear. You feel the breeze swish through your hair and billow about your loose, light clothing. You are beautiful and as you dance in joyous abandon the scene you find yourself in is contradicting fluid forward motion and moving ever faster in reverse. The palm trees are your nemesis and nature is moving more rapidly than you can catch your balance, but then they return to steady syncopation and you and nature embrace each other.
This is how I felt watching the more than twenty-year-old dance work by the great Pina Bausch who died unexpectedly from cancer in 2009. This is an older dance work and must be viewed in its 2001 context while it is ultra-feminine and elegant to watch, it does not speak of today’s changing political world and should be considered from a historic perspective. If people have a harsh view of it for not incorporating more nuanced sexuality than it has, save its single lovely Brazilian trans dancer then they need to read descriptions more thoroughly before buying tickets for anything that was choreographed before 2016. Surprisingly, I heard a person whisper as the Brazilian musicians on the screen…
