A piece by Meryl Tankard that contacts 46 years: Kontakthof - Echoes of ’78
Posters of Kontakthof - Echoes of '78 and Kontakthof at the entrance of the Barmen Opera in Wuppertal
waiting for Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78
The set and costumes for Kontakthof were designed by Rolf Borzik, Bausch's partner at the time and one of the most decisive figures in the form and aesthetics of Bausch's theatre in the early years of Tanztheater Wuppertal, as he was also involved in the choice of music and many other areas of creation.
Kontakthof contains themes that were to become central to Bausch's work in the years to come, such as the longing for love and to be loved, the sometimes quiet, sometimes hysterical dances performed in order to be loved, the search for intimacy and affection from the other side on the one hand, and the fragility that results from not being able to find it, but at the same time the urge to hurt the other side, on the other.
With a cast of 20 dancers, the piece begins with a sequence in which all the dancers, men and women, stand one after the other at the front of the stage and, after forming a line that covers the entire apron, present themselves from the front, from behind, in profile, with their arms outstretched in front, showing their teeth, pushing their hair back with their hands and making their faces more prominent. This sequence is one of the iconic scenes in Bausch's theatre.
During her lifetime, Pina Bausch created two versions of Kontakthof with Wuppertalers who had no dance training: Kontakthof. Mit Damen und Herren ab ‘65’ (Kontakthof. With ladies and gentlemen over ‘65’) in 1999 and Kontakthof. Mit Teenagern ab ‘14’ (Kontakthof. With teenagers over ‘14’) in 2008, a year before her death.
One of the most interesting parts of the documentary Pina, directed by Wim Wenders after Bausch's death, is the sequence in which short moments from the versions of the iconic scene described above, performed by three different age groups, are montaged one after the other.
A new version of Kontakthof is now on stage: 46 years after its premiere, this time with the dancers who took part in the original performance.
Kontakthof - Echoes of '78 is a production of the Pina Bausch Foundation, founded after Bausch's death by her son Salomon Bausch, London's dance mecca Sadler's Wells and Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, with co-producers from all over the world: Amare (The Hague-Netherlands), LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura (Lugano-Switzerland), Festspielhaus St. Pölten (Austria), Seongnam Arts Centre (South Korea) and Shanghai International Arts Festival (China).
The concept and staging of Kontakthof - Echoes of '78 is by Meryl Tankard, an Australian dancer and choreographer who performed in the original production of Kontakthof and created and performed major roles in Bausch's works between 1978 and 1984.
In the project, which began with a phone call from Salomon Bausch to Tankard, 9 of the 20 dancers from the first production, including Tankard herself, agreed to return to the stage. These amazing dancers, aged between 69 and 81, are, in alphabetical order Elisabeth Clarke, Josephine Ann Endicott, Lutz Förster, John Giffin, Ed Kortlandt, Beatrice Libonati, Anne Martin and Arthur Rosenfeld.
When Pina Bausch was alive, she shared with her circle the idea of re-staging Kontakthof with the dancers from the first production in the year of its 30th anniversary, but this project did not come to fruition in 2008.
For this new production, Tankard has decided to deviate from Salomon Bausch's suggestion of staging the piece in its entirety, as in Kontakthof. With Ladies and Gentlemen over "65", by compensating for the shortcomings of the cast with young dancers. Instead of re-staging one of Bausch's large-format works, which runs for three hours including an intermission, Tankard has selected several scenes/sequences from the work and created a two-hour version including an intermission. This choice not only takes into account the dancers' ages, bodies and abilities, but also allows Tankard's interpretation to have original meanings independent of Kontakthof.
Tankard, who often uses film projection in his own work and also has a degree in film direction, has based Kontakthof - Echoes of '78 entirely on the contact between the black and white video footage of the first performances in 1978, shot by Rolf Borzik, and the live performance on stage. Within the set of the original Kontakthof, the nine dancers simultaneously perform the same roles as in 1978, in the first part archive footage projected onto a transparent screen covering the entire portal of the stage, and in the second part onto the cinema screen and side walls within the existing set. As the images flow, the dancers sit on the stage in the same chair they sat in 46 years ago and perform the same movement in the same part of the stage as they did 46 years ago. If the dancers with whom they performed a situation or movement in 1978 are not among the dancers on stage now, they take a position as if those dancers were present, for example, if it is a hugging movement, they pretend to hug someone. With this meticulously staged mise-en-scene, Tankard presents not only the nine dancers on stage, but also those who are not, making their gaps visible.
However, Tankard's choice produced a very interesting and ambivalent result in a sequence at the end of the work, another iconic sequence of Kontakthof, in which a woman standing with her eyes closed in a pink nightdress is showered with affection and attention by a growing crowd of men in black suits, which gradually turns into torture and harassment. Tankard has chosen not to use also three male dancers in this sequence, so the woman moves across the stage alone, vaguely, as if subjected to interventions of unseen origin. The men harassing her are, of course, visible in the projected image in the background, but none of them are physically present on stage. Since the woman's eyes are closed in the original version, this sequence can be interpreted either as if she is being subjected to the intervention of non-existent and therefore imaginary sources, i.e. beings created in her own imagination, or as if she is experiencing this situation under the influence of memories from the past - memories that could be the very images projected in the background. At this point, there is a slight danger of a serious shift in meaning and the construction of a completely different narrative from the original Kontakhof.
There is only one scene that Tankard has added to Bausch's original Kontakthof, but it is actually inspired by a scene in the original piece. In the original Kontakthof, as the dancers sit on chairs at the front of the stage telling a personal love story that ends in disappointment, one of them holds up a microphone and makes the parts of the stories audible at that moment. In other words, the audience hears 19 different fragments of memories of love stories. At the end of the first part of Kontakthof - Echoes of '78, Tankard lets the nine dancers sit at the front of the stage and has them repeat the answers to some of the questions she had asked them in writing during the making of Kontakthof - Echoes of '78, as we learned from one of the dancers during the Q&A session after the show. Passing the microphone from hand to hand, they tell us their names, ages, where they come from, what they miss most, what they like best. This sequence, just before the interval, creates a more intimate bond between the performers and us; it suddenly brings them closer to us. We go into the interval with first-hand information about them. When the interval ends and we return to the auditorium, we are again far from the stage, but this time the transparent curtain separating them from us has been lifted; as in the original work, they can come to the front edge of the stage, right up to us.
Through the use of film projection (directed by Meryl Tankard, edited by Kenny Ang and designed by YeastCulture), Tankard creates two different visual aesthetics and meanings in the two parts of Kontakthof - Echoes of '78; in the first part the dancers remain colourful but small behind the huge black and white archive images in the foreground, while in the second part the archive images, this time projected onto the existing cinema screen on the stage and side walls, envelop and highlight the dancers. In my opinion, the first part is aesthetically and semantically stronger because the contact between past and present is visually stronger thanks to the overlapping images (thanks to the meticulously designed lighting by Ryan Joseph Stafford). The figures moving in the black and white images on the huge curtain that covers the whole stage portal are like ghosts that haunt the stage, because there are dancers in the images who are not alive today or on stage at that moment. They all speak, look and dance from the past to the present through video footage; some of them have their counterparts in the present, we already see them on stage, but some of them have no counterparts. Isn't this ephemeral feature exactly what the performing arts are like, as in the famous tirade by Fasulyeciyan at the end of the play The Cunning Wife of the Dumb Husband by the Turkish playwright Haldun Taner: "But then the theatre begins to live. Because one of Satenik's songs is stuck to one of these curtains. A tirade of mine is stuck to this moulding. A dialogue between Hıranuş and Virginia has taken refuge in the tear of an old costume. These memories emerge from their hiding places in this silence and whisper back to the stage. We are no longer ourselves. We no longer have an audience. But our lines continue to whisper into the morning". In a similiar sense, here, in Tankard's Kontakthof - Echoes of '78, the dancers from 1978, who are no longer on stage, wander with their movements, lines and states across the surfaces, curves and mouldings of the stage walls...
applausing Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78
Q&A with some of the dancers of Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78
Kontakthof - Echoes of '78 was performed in Wuppertal from 26th November to 1st December 2024 at the Barmen Opera House, one of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch's traditional venues. On the same dates, the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch ensemble also performed a restaged version of Kontakthof. On Saturday 30th November and Sunday 1st December, the audience had the opportunity to see Kontakthof at the matinee (14:00) and Kontakthof - Echoes of '78 at the soiree (19:30), i.e. two versions of Kontakthof back to back.
waiting for Kontakthof
applausing Kontakthof
The restaging of Kontakthof by the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch was very satisfying as a production that still retained the atmosphere of Bausch's pieces, thanks to the presence of Julie Shanahan, Michael Strecker, Andrey Berezin, Daphnis Kokkinos and Nayoung Kim in the cast of 20 dancers who had been with the company since Pina Bausch's time. When French choreographer Boris Charmatz took over as artistic director two years ago, the dancers who had joined the company after Bausch's death, young dancers who had absorbed Bausch's style, left gradually, and the cast changed drastically. Fortunately, the company is still able to maintain a high level of quality thanks to the presence of a small number of dancers from the Bausch era. Furthermore, the efforts of young dancers Emily Castelli, Taylor Drury, Çağdaş Ermiş, Julian Stierli, Christopher Tandy and Tsai-Wei Tien should also be highlighted.
applausing Kontakthof
applausing Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78
In the 2024-25 season; Kontakthof will tour to Aarhus and Copenhagen in June, the dates of the next first performances of Kontakthof - Echoes of '78 are not yet clear, but it is planned to tour the world for two years, starting from London's Sadler's Wells in 2025; as long as the dancers' health permits due to their age.
In fact, during the first half of the fourth performance of Kontakthof - Echoes of '78 on 30th November 2024, which I attended, Meryl Tankard injured her hip (we as the audience were aware of this, as she sincerely stated this in the microphone sequence at the end of the first half) and was unable to take part in all the sequences she had planned for the second half, as well as the salute.
Kontakthof - Echoes of '78 is therefore a very fragile show; it is doubtful whether it will be able to tour for two years as originally conceived and planned. So, if you are curious and have the means, try to see these amazing dancers and this touching piece at the first opportunity...
applausing the amazing dancers at the end of Q&A
[All photographs in this article were taken by Mehmet Kerem Özel at the Wuppertal-Barmen Opera on 30th November 2024.]
[A Turkish version of this article with photos from the Kontakthof - Echoes of '78 was published in Tiyatro Dergisi on 4th December 2024.]
Comments
Post a Comment