November 08, 2004 -

OTTAWA -- Modern dance master Pina Bausch takes Ottawa by storm with her groundbreaking company, Tanztheater Wuppertal. Known for her lush, dreamlike, emotionally charged productions, the international superstar is presenting her Portuguese-inspired piece Masurca Fogo at 20:00 in Southam Hall of the National Arts Centre (NAC) on November 26 and 27, 2004. Based in the small industrial German city of Wuppertal, the company is known worldwide for its innovative blending of dance, theatre, music, and visual arts in a format that often includes speaking, singing, chanting, and elaborate props. This marks the only Canadian appearance of the company, and a return of Germany’s most famous dance artist after an absence of almost 20 years.

Pina Bausch is a brilliant choreographer, certainly one of the most important and influential creative forces of the 20th century. Having inspired two generations of choreographers, dance theatre makers, and opera directors, Bausch is renowned worldwide for her exceptional artistry. Pina Bausch's dance-theatre works are deeply rooted in the stories they tell. Themes recurrent in her works involve the search for true love, the war between the sexes, and the relationship between the individual and the group. Her style is often revue-like, presented in epics that meld music, dialogue, and dance into collages of dreamlike sequences intercut with parallel plots. Speech and movement patterns are repeated, while contrasting elements and emotions are played against one another. Childish games contrast with urbane sophistication, grief with happiness, tension with release, darkness with light. Applauded worldwide, Pina Baush leaves audiences and critics in raptures.

Born in Solingen in 1940, Bausch began studying dance at age 14 at the Folkwang School in Essen, where she drew inspiration from expressionist choreographer Kurt Jooss. After moving to New York to attend the Julliard School, she danced with the Metropolitan Opera and the New American Ballet, then returned to join a new company founded by Jooss, the Folkwang Ballet. There Bausch choreographed her first piece, Fragmente, and eventually became director. In 1973 she took charge of the Wuppertal Ballet and transformed it into Tanztheater Wuppertal, ushering in a new era of dance shaped by startling images and high drama. “I’m not interested in how people move, but in what moves them,” says Bausch, whose work has engendered both adulation and criticism.

Bausch is known for questioning her dancers about their emotions and personal relationships and incorporating their feelings in her work. Sharp bending and turning, sudden neck movements, caresses, ear tweaks and pinches, rather than formalized balletic movements, mark many a Bausch production. “In the beginning I had dancers who were busy with the way they looked and were afraid of losing something onstage,” Bausch told a New York Times writer in 1985. “Then I found dancers who had less to lose and they were not afraid to go somewhere further. I love these dancers very much. I think they are beautiful. I don't mean outside beauty, I try to show how beautiful they are inside.”

“When I first began choreographing, I never thought of it as choreography but as expressing feelings. Though every piece is different, they are all trying to get at certain things that are difficult to put into words. In the work, everything belongs to everything else -- the music, the set, the movement and whatever is said. I don't know where one thing stops and another begins, and I don't need to analyze it. It would limit the work if I were too analytical.”

“Returning and again taking New York by storm, Pina Bausch brought her twenty-two-dancer troupe with Masurca Fogo, a wry meditation on life and love in Portugal and Brazil. For more than two and one-half hours, a panorama of zany activities unfolded, punctuated by solos of pure dancing. Like a Fellini film, Masurca sprawled in a barrage of provocative images…. A selection of popular music accompanied the piece: from Portuguese traditional to Brazilian Top 40 to k.d. lang, whose resonant vocal delivery can make inveterate urbanites sit still for country music. Rainer Behr led off, running down the rocky gray mountain that spilled into the trapezoidal white room, where set designer Peter Pabst placed the action. Later, the ladies sunbathed atop the hill. Supine men passed Ruth Amarante along their uplifted arms as she sighed into a microphone. Men popped lanky, sexy Julie Anne Stanzak's balloon "gown" with the cigarettes she lighted for them. Bausch veteran dancer Nazareth Panadero (a reincarnated Bette Davis) kissed men -- including some in the first row -- on the forehead, sighing "It's a job!" A chicken nibbled on smashed watermelon, dancers swam in a plastic water flume, and a fake walrus lumbered across the stage. The visual punning made us smile, sometimes guffaw. Heightening the cinematic effect were films, projected over the dancing, of Brazilian musicians, panoramas from a bus window, strutting flamingoes, and the ocean: Bausch's Brazilian home movies?”

Masurca Fogo (Mazurka of Fire) – created for Lisbon’s Expo ’98 -- finds Bausch in a playful and upbeat mood. Inspired by her fascination with Portugal, this two-act extravaganza for 22 dancers is exuberant comic fantasy and exotic tropical holiday rolled into one. Performers and audiences alike revel in the sheer sensual joy of the seaside, but are drawn into the pitfalls of social ritual and the hope, desire, and heartbreak of human intimacy. Masurca Fogo features Portuguese fado, tango, samba, Brazilian waltzes, jazz, and pop songs; there is also dialogue, projected movie images, exceptionally theatrical costumes and effects, and interaction between performers and the audience. The choreography, naturally, is dazzling and seductive: energetic, ecstatic, and extraordinary.

“I saw Masurca Fogo in Barcelona and was struck by its vitality and optimism, its bucolic air and those unexpected images of painful beauty which made me cry from pure pleasure.”

“The audience not only comprehend, they live, they hope, they suffer and fear with the performers. They are drawn into a highly concentrated experience of profound emotional intensity which shakes and moves them from inside.”

PINA BAUSCH ON FILM
Celebrating the return of Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal to the National Arts Centre after a 20-year absence, these films explore the world of this complex, enigmatic dance superstar.

• Coffee with Pina /Lee Yanor, 2003 /17 minutes An intimate glimpse into the creative world of Pina Bausch which captures the feelings expressed by bodies in motion.
• Café Müller /Pina Bausch, 1985 / 48 minutes Mirroring themes of love and separation, grief and despair, Pina Bausch dances one of the four characters; a desolate, solitary figure, she is fabulous, with focus and precision in her heart-breaking, slow movements.

Join us for this eye-opening look into an extraordinary artist’s creative process.
Saturday, November 27 at 14:00 in the Auditorium of the Library and Archives Canada 395 Wellington Street ~ tickets $9
In collaboration with the Canadian Film Institute and the Goethe Institute

SPECIAL OFFER FROM VIA RAIL: 35% OFF!
Ticket buyers save 35% off the full adult VIA Rail fare in Comfort Class (economy) or 5% in VIA 1 first class. This offer is valid between any city in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor and Ottawa, for travel on any day between November 25-28, 2004. Passengers may book their tickets online at www.viarail.ca. Choose the date, time, comfort class, and point of departure. When prompted to enter a discount type, enter “CONV” as the discount code; enter “10403” as the serial number. The fare will then be updated by VIA’s reservation system to reflect the discount of 35%. Passengers must pick up their tickets at the VIA ticket counter and show their purchased tickets for the NAC Pina Bausch performance to the agent. This offer is not valid for VIA tickets by mail (TBM) or at VIA ticket kiosks.

SPECIAL OFFER FROM THE LORD ELGIN HOTEL
Ticket buyers receive a special rate of only $109 for a single or double room (regular rate $145). The Lord Elgin Hotel is at 100 Elgin Street, directly across the street from the NAC. Reservations should be made directly with the hotel, at 1-800-267-4298 or by e-mail at reservations@lordelginhotel.ca

TICKETS
A small number of balcony tickets remain. They are $45, and $23.50 for students (upon presentation of a valid student ID card) and for children age 12 and under. Tickets are available at the NAC Box Office (in person) and through Ticketmaster (with surcharges) at (613) 755-1111; Ticketmaster may also be accessed through the NAC’s web-site at www.nac-cna.ca.  A pair of ‘Live Rush’ last-minute tickets (subject to availability) can be purchased by full-time students for $9.50 each at the Live Rush Centre in the NAC Foyer at 18:00 on the day of performance only, upon presentation of a valid ‘Live Rush’ card.

GROUP SALES
Groups of 20 or more save up to 20% off regular priced tickets for Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal performances. Students save 50%. Adult group tickets range from $36.40 to $64.05 per person, all inclusive. For reservations, call (613) 947-7000 x384 or toll free 1-866-850-2787, x384 or e-mail grp@nac-cna.ca

Photos for all dance events can be viewed and downloaded at: www.nac-cna.ca/media/

Information:
Gerald Morris
Marketing and Media Relations,
NAC Dance Department
(613) 947-7000, ext. 249
gmorris@nac-cna.ca

PINA BAUSCH
Born in Solingen, Germany in 1940, Pina Bausch began her dance studies at the age of 15 at the Folkwang School in Essen, where she studied with several teachers, including the renowned expressionist choreographer Kurt Jooss. In 1959, she graduated and was awarded the Folkwang Prize for special achievement. With a stipend from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Bausch went to New York in 1960 to study at the Juilliard School with Anthony Tudor, José Limon, Louis Horst, Alfredo Corvino, Margaret Craske, and La Meri, among others. At the same time, she performed with the Paul Sanasardo and Donya Feuer Dance Company and with the New American Ballet. Pina Bausch later became a member of the Metropolitan Opera's ballet company and also worked with Paul Taylor. She has remarked that her two years in New York were among the most influential in her early life and that when she thinks of New York, she feels a sense of homesickness.

In 1962, Bausch returned to Germany where she became a soloist in the newly formed Folkwang Ballett, working once again with Kurt Jooss, with Hans Zülig, and especially with Jean Cébron. Her choreographic career began in 1968 with Fragmente, followed by Im Wind der Zeit (In the Wind of Time), which later won first prize at the Second International Choreographic Competition in Cologne. Bausch has said that her impetus for taking up choreography was out of the frustration of wanting something to dance. From 1969 to 1973, she served as Artistic Director of the company while continuing to dance and choreograph. Bausch's work was soon gaining notice and, after creating the bachannale for Hans-Peter Lehmann's production of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser for the Wuppertal Opera Company in 1972, she was offered the directorship of the Wuppertal Opera Ballet. Reluctant at first, Bausch agreed when she was permitted to bring dancers from the Folkwang-Tanzstudio with her. Not long after her arrival, the company became the Wuppertaler Tanztheater, and was later renamed the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.

In her new position, Bausch helped revive modern dance in post-war Germany -- which has its roots in Ausdrucktanz, or "expressive dance," which looked to everyday movements to express personal experiences, and which gained popularity in the 1920s. But with the rise of the Nazis and the war, modern dance lost its vigor and many of its creators, such as Kurt Jooss, left the country; German dance became isolated. After the war, there was little enthusiasm for Ausdrucktanz, while classical ballet flourished. With Jooss's return to Germany in 1949, the re-established Folkwang School provided one of the only places for formal training in dance other than ballet. But it was not until the late 1960s and 1970s that German modern dance began to regain momentum, in part due to the student movement in West Germany. Young dancers felt constrained by the formalism of German ballet and American post-modern dance, and rebelled against the Americanization of their country. Some returned to the expressionism of Ausdrucktanz and started to venture into new ground, combining it with elements from the other arts. Toward the late 1970s, the term ‘Tanztheater’ or ‘dance theater’, began to be used to distinguish the work of these choreographers, one of them being Pina Bausch.