The “Missing Athens Piece” of Pina Bausch in Catanzaro: “Since She”

Photo: Julian Mommert

Organized in Catanzaro, the capital of Calabria for 19 years, the Armonie d'Arte Festival has expanded its range for several years thanks to its dedicated and passionate creator and artistic director Chiara Giordano. So in the last years the festival began to include not only music but also theater and dance performances. The most important performance of this year's program was “Since She”(Seit sie) performed by Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch on 13-15 September 2019. The festival not only invited Bausch's company, but also prepared a comprehensive one-week program to commemorate Bausch on the tenth anniversary of her death.

Bausch had close relations with Italy when she was alive. She created “Viktor” inspired by Rome in 1986, the first of the series “Cities and People” in which Istanbul-inspired piece “Nefes” (2003) was also a part. Bausch created also another piece for Rome in 2000: “O Dido”. In addition to regular tours with her company in many cities of Italy; she received her first international award from the Italian Association of Dance Critics in 1980, she acted in the film “And the Ship Goes” (E la nave va) of the famous Italian film director Federico Fellini in 1983, she created the Palermo-inspired “Palermo Palermo” in 1989 and she received many honorary doctorates from various academies and universities in Italy throughout her career. Because of this strengthened ties, many Italian institutions organized Bausch commemoration events this year. For example, during the summer La Fenice Theater in Venice, where Bausch has been guest with her company numerous times since 1981, greeted her with an exhibition of original posters and photographs taken during the tour performances. 

Pina Bausch, The Venetian Years

(Photo: Mehmet Kerem Özel, Teatro La Fenice, Venice, July 2019)

The commemoration program of the Armonie d'Arte festival included: an open rehearsal, a workshop given by a Bausch dancer, an exhibition titled “Beyond the Boundaries of the Body – From Tarantism to Pina Bausch” by the anthropologist and photographer Patrizia Giancotti, interview with Papaioannou hosted by Leonetta Bentivoglio who is a well known writer on Bausch’s works, the screening of Wim Wenders' film “Pina” and a conference titled “Traces, Pina revealed” by the journalist Elisa Guzzo Vaccarino, who scripted a documentary about Bausch. The most important event of the program was the performances of “Since She”.

“Since she” is a piece created by the Greek director Dimitris Papaioannou and commissioned by Adolphe Binder, the first general art director appointed outside the company after eight years of the sudden death of Bausch. This piece is also the first in the repertoire of the ensemble, covering the whole of an evening, except of Bausch's. After being staged for the first time in May 2018 at Wuppertal, “Since she” made its Italy premiere at the Teatro Politeama Theater in Catanzaro after touring Amsterdam, Athens, London and Paris in the 2018-2019 season.

Thanks to IKSV (İstanbul Foundation for Art and Culture), İstanbul audience knows Bausch very well with her four tours and the “Nefes” piece inspired by the city, just as they are also familiar with Papaioannou. The Greek director opened the Istanbul Theater Festival in 2000 with “Medea”, one of his masterpieces, long before being recognized worldwide since the last four years. In fact, these performances in Istanbul made it possible for Papaioannou to meet Pina Bausch, whom he had been a fan of since he watched a video tape of “Café Müller” given by his dance teacher at the age of 19, and also for Bausch to watch “Medea”, because a week after “Medea” at that year's festival, she was invited with “Masurca Fogo”. 

As the title of the piece "Since She", it is likely that "she" refers to Pina Bausch; so the title could easily be formulated as "Since the absence of Pina / Since Pina passed away". So, we could say that throughout the piece Papaioannou lets us watch the things, images, figures that passed by in her dancers lives, maybe also in the lives of her audience, but most probably in Papaioannou's life "since she” was gone. This piece could imply his own struggle and how difficult it must have been for someone like him to find and trace one's own path, to proceed, even at times to stumble, and actually the whole process of working with the company of a deceased artist whom he was a fan of. However Papaioannou’s piece tells us also a lot about mankind, being human, creating, possessing and designing in general.

“Since she” is not only mathematically structured and constructed in a wonderful way, that is rational in Apolloyian sense, but also contains a great intensity of emotions that rises and falls like a big wave, so it is also not deprived of Dionysiac enthusiasm and ecstasis.

As the god/creator creates/reveals man/created in his own image, Papaioannou uses to create figures as copies of himself in his pieces, especially in the triology: "Primal Matter" (2012), "Still Life" (2014) ve "The Great Tamer" (2017). Besides, he doesn't create just a single figure, he reproduces the same figure and fills the stage with male figures who resembled him. In “Since she” he constructs a very similar structure. He defines the senior dancers who worked with Bausch as “creators” and turns them to the copies resembling  Bausch and himself, and he describes the young dancers who joined the company in the post-Bausch era, as “created”. 

Two of the senior dancers of the companyRuth Amarante ve Ditta Miranda Jasjfi with their costumes and way of attitudes embody the most associated image with Bausch: the sleeping woman in "Café Müller" (1978). Not taking into consideration her 10 minutes solo apperance in "Danzon" (1995) - "Café Müller" is also her most famous and iconic work and the only work in which she danced. The imagery of a sleepwalker or a lady being asleep in a thin nightgown, eyes closed, barefoot and hair open is Bausch’s most known image. In a few of the scenes of “Since She” there is also a thick coat on the shoulders of these two female dancers, just like the coat on Bausch’s shoulder in the last scene of "Café Müller". 

Franko Schmidt, a senior male dancer from Bausch period, had been without a mustache for years, but now he has grown a thin mustache that makes him look like a copy of Papaioannou. Throughout the piece he portrays a naughty and witty joker, and that is also reminds me of Papaioannou.

Michael Strecker, another male senior Bausch-era dancer whom I have watching for 20 years, is bearded for the first time. Thinking whom he might represents, the famous Greek painter Yannis Tzarouchis comes to my mind whom Papaioannou calls as his master in almost every interview. When I searched for his photographs I saw that Tzarouchis was indeed mostly bearded. Thus, many scenes of “Since She” and also the order during the salute became meaningful to me.

Right after the first scene with the chairs, the bearded man (Strecker) works at a large table; he cuts, shapes, creates a black chair and places it in front of the proscenium. Then he continues to work and creates a young man dressed like himself, in a dark suit with a white shirt and a thin black tie. The young man, Jonathan Fredrickson dancer from the post-Bausch era of the company, comes to the front of the stage, places the chair upside down on the edge of the backrest and steps on it. He does exactly what is expected of him as a human being; interprets what is given to him, reverses life, looks at life from another angle. However while doing this, he puts himself on a razor’s edge. With the possibility of falling at any moment, he adjusts his weight and balances himself on it by opening his arms. He's being-on-razor's-edge-tension on the chair is like birth pangs, like an artist's tension during the process of creation, when one is making something out of nothing.

Towards the end of the piece, there is one scene where the same young man steps on the upside-down chair again however this time there is also a young woman (Brenna O’Mara, a dancer from post-Bausch era) lying on its seat. So his job is more difficult this time, but he succeeds. Young woman and young man are perfectly balancing together. O’Mara and Fredrickson represent women and man, Eve and Adam in different scenes throughout the work, sometimes naked as well.

The last image of “Since She”: while the bearded man representing Tzarouchis (Strecker) is standing like a shadow on top of the mountain at the back of the stage, the woman representing Bausch (Amarante) is slowly disappearing from a slit between the slopes of the same mountain. Thus in this final scene, Papaioannou combines the two most influential figures of his art. But, of course, these two figures may be also masculine and feminine gods that create the whole world, like Cybele at the bosom of the earth and Zeus at the top of the mountain.

In the salute at the end of the performance, each time Michael Strecker, the bearded dancer, invites Papaioannou to the stage. However, as it is known, the opposite sex is preferred when someone from behind the scenes is invited to the stage in salute.

So, Papaioannou carries his “image copying game” even to the greeting of the piece; he is called to the salute by Strecker, who represents Tzachouris who raised him as an artist in real life.

Papaioannou’s piece has features that overlap with the formal aesthetics and contents of Bausch’s pieces: women in evening dresses and high heels, men in suits (Costume designer: Thanos Papastergiou), an effective, sumptuous and transforming scenography (Stage designer: Tina Tzoka), an eclectic sound world consisting of selected music from Wagner to Giya Kancheli, Bach to Wayne King, Mahler to Tom Waits, creating amplified and distorted sounds with microphones (Sound design: Thanasis Deligiannis), accepting the stage as a space in its own reality and creating a life there, a small choreographic piece born from a simple movement and danced by the whole company, use of illusion techniques, use of objects with feminine and masculine connotations, use of chairs and tables, woman-man relationships, reflecting the idea of ​​flying into the movement, an intense black humor and irony.

Naturally, there are also differences of Papaioannou from Bausch: not using words, visual references to images and figures from Greek mythology, Christian narrative, paintings of art history and cinema, creator-created relationship, breaking up and fragmenting the tools (human bodies or inanimate objects) and later assembling them with other tools (other bodies), using objects as images to make them symbols of other than themselves. 

Photo: Julian Mommert

For the introduction of "Since She" Papaioannou writes: "This one is a love letter to Pina. A thank you note for her passage through existence, and for the indelible mark she left in human history." I think that in "Since She" Papaioannou talks about his admiration for Bausch, his inspirations from her, his own feelings while preparing a piece for her company. He attempts to translate all these into emotions and I believe he is extraordinarily successful.

For years I wondered why Pina Bausch did not create a piece for Athens although she often went to Athens on tour, although she had a Greek dancer, the magnificent Daphnis Kokkinos, in her company for many years and although he was mostly her assistant in the production process of her late pieces. It is as if, by means of "Since She", Papaioannou creates "The Missing Athens Piece" among the complete works of Bausch with its Bauschian qualities, subtle use of Greek music, abstract sirtaki movements danced in unison by the company members, and with the Acropolis at the back of the stage. So, Dimitris Papaioannou approaches Pina Bausch without sacrificing his own gaze and pays her an hommage.