Even If you don’t know modern dance from “Modern Family” you should make a beeline for the limited theaters showcasing this landmark 3D documentary of Pina Bausch’s work. Almodovar fans (count me in) know Bausch’s work from her breathtaking opening scene in Talk To Her. Waiting to see this film without the 3D aspect is tantamount to listening to a new CD of your favorite band while someone plays it for you on the telephone. Director Wim Wenders went through the trouble of mounting his cameras on a crane, fer Chrissake, so you’d be right onstage like never before. There are those who think this even beats being there live. Least you can do is drive a few miles to experience what the 3D experience is ultimately capable of. “Avatar” aside, this easily surpasses Herzog’s stellar Cave of Forgotten Dreams for insightful use of the technology.
Though Bausch’s life is left out of this particular movie, it’s the work that achieves an immediacy that wows. (Bausch insisted expository talking heads be banned from this documentary and it’s far better for it). “Cafe Mueller,” the piece in Talk To Her, is well represented here, as are three other pieces, all on the edge of the edge. Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” is done up with a stage full of peat. City sidewalks, trolley cars, open fields, and Wuppertal, Germany’s bizarre monorail system all serve as sets for the Tanztheater Wuppertal’s recreation of Pausch’s work. In “Vollmond” (Full Moon) a waterfall onstage textures into the space it surrounds as dancers angle their approach to confront it.
They are served up bittersweet since Pausch died at 68 a couple of days before filming was to start (and a mere five days after her cancer diagnosis). Her company ranges the gamut in nationalities and age. They’re far from ring all young people. In “Kontakthof” (Meeting Hall) dancers of retirement age share the piece with dancers young enough to be their grandchildren.
The company’s commonality is their devotion to her as if she were a saint. We’re given their tributes in between the grim yet amusing, often robotic, and always compelling choreography. Detractors of the film bemoan Pausch’s relative absence from the film. (Seems like complaining a world class chef’s meal is deficient because the chef didn’t sit down with you). In reality she lives and breathes through every scene. The film’s center of gravity seems virtually something supernatural. These dancers didn’t make it up themselves. They are wrung dry by their muse, as are we.
Never realized dance modern dance could feel this real.
9 modern dance 3D’s (out of 10)