Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I have become a man obsessed. A few years ago I watched a Spanish film by Pedro Almodovar called Talk to Her. It was about women in comas and the men who loved them, and dance, and bullfighting, and many other things besides. It was very Spanish, and I fell in love with everything except the bullfighting. The film contained three short excerpts from dance productions within the film, and these captivated me.
I’m not a Dance person. I’m rarely asked to dance, and much more often asked not to. We do go occasionally to the cinema to watch a ballet, and a couple of times I’ve been to the Royal Opera House, which was a brilliant experience. Once there, I’ve enjoyed the music, but the actual dancing has not made me an enthusiast. I’ve felt obscurely guilty, because of the suspicion that I’ve deprived a real enthusiast of the experience of a lifetime.
In Wuppertal back in 1973
The one time I went to the ballet and really enjoyed myself was Romeo and Juliet, with music by Prokofiev. If you’ve seen the Apprentice on TV, that’s the music you hear. We had seats so far round the horseshoe-shaped auditorium that we could only see half the stage, which didn’t trouble me at all, because I could look down at the orchestra while it played the whole thing live, just for me. I have no idea what was happening onstage.
Some years later I saw another film, this time called Pina, a documentary about a legendary choreographer called Pina Bausch, who created a whole new type of Dance Theatre in Wuppertal back in 1973. She died in 2009, just before the film was made, and it turned into a celebration of her life and work. The dance pieces are a very long way from Swan Lake. They made me cry, and I was hooked.
With a stupid smile on my face
As with so many things in my life, this took me by surprise. I had no expectation of weeping, and there I was, with a stupid smile on my face and tears rolling down my cheeks. I’ve been trying to find out what happened there ever since.
Last weekend I went on pilgrimage to Sadlers Wells, where the Pina Bausch Company was performing 1980 – a Piece by Pina Bausch. This is a huge three-and-a-half-hour performance, on a stage completely covered in actual grass, and empty, except for a life-size model deer.
A cast of twenty went through a series of absurd unrelated set-pieces, which sometimes involved dance or at least strange ritualised movements, the pace and mood varied from extremely slow to downright hysteria, and there was a lot of talking and interaction with the audience. And it was unexpectedly very funny.
This didn’t mean I didn’t feel anything
I was rapt and spellbound, and oddly I didn’t feel much during the performance. I knew this didn’t mean I didn’t feel anything, just that the things I was feeling were new and different, so I didn’t have familiar ground to base them on. It was like I was learning a new language of the emotions. It was weird.
I was surprised by many things. The cast were from all over the world, and they were themselves whilst performing. I was also astonished at the range of ages and sizes. I’ve always noticed at the ballet that everyone is the same size and shape, and they tend to be quite young, apart from the sedate parts played by veterans. Some of these dancers were in their sixties, and they ranged from a very tall German in his late sixties to a tiny and very young Italian dancer probably half his height. They were all very skilful and totally dedicated to what they were doing.
More acceptable in the rest of Europe
There were a lot of Europeans in the audience too. I sat next to three generations of Italian women, the grandmother explaining in bad English that she wanted her grand-daughter to see this beautiful production. It struck me that this sort of thing must be more acceptable in the rest of Europe.
I spent much of the evening thinking how this friend or that relative might react to what I was seeing, and I didn’t think any of the people I know would be likely to enjoy it as much as me, although I may be doing them a disservice. This made the experience of sitting in a packed house watching 1980 even more surreal.
Opinions may vary, of course
I’m not some sort of up-himself cultural snob (opinions may vary, of course). If I was I would be able to explain all this. I’m still trying to explain it to myself. I do know that seeing 1980 felt like a huge privilege, and was one of those moments that I’ll always carry around with me. They’re going to be performing it in my head for the rest of my life.
So far I’ve arrived at a place where I think they were talking about emotions and experiences that run so deep that words alone can’t describe them adequately. There was a lot about death and fear and the innocence of childhood and the imperfections of adulthood. It was written after Pina Bausch’s partner died unexpectedly. It was a tribute and also a message of hope and recovery too. But it didn’t tell it as a story; instead it illustrated these deep emotions with movement and tableau, and somehow that feeling communicated itself to those places within me that have felt those same things.
Something extraordinary comes along
That’s why I can’t explain anything about it, and that’s why I found myself once again sitting with a silly grin on my face and tears rolling down my cheeks.
No matter how cynical and old I feel, somehow, wonderfully, something extraordinary comes along to baffle and intrigue me. Long may that continue.
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