Under the suspended monorail of Wuppertal, the city of the famous German choreographer Pina Bausch, they dance lined up in the middle of a street, forming a gigantic colorful ribbon, all sprinkled with color as in the Indian festival Holi. Aged from three months to 88 years, these 182 professionals and amateurs are taking part in the first project of Frenchman Boris Charmatz, 50, steward for nine months of the Tanztheater Pina Bausch, in Wuppertal, a city in the Ruhr in western Germany.
"As a first gesture I find it very beautiful to see huge professionals, who from the age of 5 have sacrificed everything for this job, mingle with people who work in lingerie shops, teach or are retired," explains the choreographer. The street of performance was not chosen at random: it appears in the road movie Alice in the cities, filmed in 1974 by the German director Wim Wenders, a great friend of Pina Bausch, to whom he dedicated a 3D documentary in 2011.
Since the death of the German artist, struck down by a dazzling cancer in 2009 at the age of 68, five directors have succeeded each other at the Tanztheater, created in 1973. In this legendary temple of contemporary dance, occupied by a company of thirty dancers and sixty employees, "the spirit of Pina Bausch is everywhere", acknowledges Boris Charmatz.
He was appointed last September for eight years. If he has never met the German artist, who has transcended the boundaries between dance and theater, he "knows his work and is surrounded by people who knew him: his son, the taxi driver, the dancers". The one who is considered one of the leaders of "non-dance", by professing to invest all types of public spaces and to decompartmentalize the boundaries between the arts, believes that he is "there to learn".
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'Hybrid style'
And with the dancers of the troupe "we are inventing a hybrid style between his work and mine," he explains. During Sunday's happening, which lasts three hours and required ten days of rehearsal, Boris Charmatz was keen to include all kinds of different people, such as a little three-month-old baby, Samu, with Down syndrome. "For us, it was important to participate as a family," say his parents, Günter Kömmet, 52, and his wife Nadine, 45, who dances while carrying her son.
Accompanied by organ music, the dancers each perform their own movements that they invented themselves according to various themes such as love, death, computer bug. To illustrate "demonstration", one of them begins to shout "wir sind das Volk" ("We are the people", the famous slogan chanted by the demonstrators of the former communist GDR before the fall of the wall in the autumn of 1989, editor's note). "Don't look at us, join us," says French dancer Marie Garric from Angers.
Jutta Geike, 65, a resident of the nearby town of Remscheid, said she found in this performance the spirit of Pina Bausch, for whom she had danced for five years. "She let us do our movements, which is also the case here," says this former artist who had not danced for twelve years.
After this free show, Boris Charmatz will present for a week, until May 29, various outdoor and indoor projects in Wuppertal: a "sleepy" solo that he conceived and performs by whistling, a ballet by Pina Bausch Palermo, Palermo, which premiered in 1989. Always in this spirit of breaking the boundaries between the dancers and the public, spectators are invited for two days to participate in the warm-up and a rehearsal of Palermo, Palermo. His first creation entitled Cathedral Freedom with the troupe will be presented in a church in Wuppertal in September.