Pina Bausch production in Calcutta

Pablo Aran Gimeno, Ruth Amarante
Photo: © Ulli Weiss

Pina Bausch, the celebrated German dancer and choreographer, director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal, will be in in Calcutta with her troupe this month. She is one of the leading figures of modern dance.

Bamboo Blues, a dance theatre performance inspired by India, its cultural multiplicity and a research trip to India in November 2006, will be staged in the city on 18th and 19th January, at the Rabindra Sadan.

Pina (67) and her associates had visited the Talimi Haq School in late-2006, during their visit to Calcutta in preparation for their India-based production.

The piece was premiered in Germany in May 2007 without any name as the company's "new work." Apparently Bausch had decided on the "inspiring" title after a visit to Kyoto, Japan.

Here are some reviews of the performance:



‘The splendid soloists seem to be expressing those ambivalent emotions when their bodies move, fall, stretch and bend. They give themselves up to the momentum of the dance. To experience this is to be moved, to be carried out of the hall into another world.’

Melanie Suchy, ‘Dance theatre to the rhythm of the heart’, Die Zeit, 24 May 2007

‘The work of recent years essentially comprises happy memories of journeys; the rich associations, memories portrayed to perfection through dance are always a delight to watch. This piece too is a sequence of striking, powerful dances - mainly solos -and vividly staged perceptions of a different part of the world. Once more, Pina Bausch tells us much more than what can be rendered in a few lines’

Rolf Pfeiffer, ‘The weightlessness of India’s magic’, Westfälische Rundschau, 20 May 2007



‘The choreographic composition of contrasting moods in which elegies float on gusts, like the flowers released with balloons among the audience, attests to one’s own body language as a triumph of multi-layered expression.’

Dieter Stoll, ‘Indian dreams for the new piece by Pina Bausch’, Abendzeitung Nürnberg, 21 May 2007

‘The genuinely moving moments of the new evening: when a dancer appears out of the apparently enchanted forest that serves as a curtain, swings her arm, pauses for a second . . . and then describes her finely chiselled and passionate body art on the large stage which for minutes belongs just to her.’

Sylvia Staude, ‘A gentle Indian breeze—in Pina Bausch’s new, still untitled dance-theatre piece, Frankfurter Rundschau, 21 May 2007

The teachers and children of Talimi Haq School have been invited to attend the dress rehearsal of Bamboo Blues on 17 January.

Bravo!