by Leigh Witchel
The sold-out run of a revival of Pina Bausch’s “The Rite of Spring” as part of the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels festival closed out the year in a burst of theater, easily making most folks’ Top 10 lists. Kudos to the company of dancers from across Africa, powered and produced by The Pina Bausch Foundation, Sadler’s Wells and the École des Sables center in Senegal. Before “Rite,” though, came a much quieter and more contemplative opening, “common ground[s].”
The Park Avenue Armory was arranged as a thrust stage with bleacher seating. More often the space is used like an arena with seating on the long sides, but here, as we might have in a proscenium house, we saw the performances head on.
The cavernous space, which might easily house a circus, was also conducive for less being more. The dancing area, a large square, was sparsely scattered with a few groups of rocks and some props unobtrusively placed where needed. The recorded music, by Fabrice Bouillon LaForest, slowly pulsed, then strings plucked.
A single orange light went up slowly on two women facing away from us, sitting on stools, Malou Airaudo and Germaine Acogny. Airaudo, 75, has had a long career with Bausch’s company. Acogny, 78, founded the École des Sables.
The actions were simple, quotidian. Airaudo walked away, skittering back and reaching skyward. She mimed washing herself with a rock, the she sat facing away again. Acogny moved aside Airaudo’s dress strap and rubbed her back with a stone.
Journeying together and apart, one walked to the front, the other to the back. Acogny had a conversation with herself, but one we couldn’t make out. Finally she addressed Airaudo “What are you doing here?”
The response was also in English, though some of the talk was in French: “I was looking at the sky, it is so beautiful and I was thinking about Pina.”
The miking made the women hard to understand, but the specifics of what they were saying seemed less critical. Acogny scooted round the stage with her feet on a towel, as one might do to clean the floor. The two women came to one another, smiling, touching their cheeks to their arms.
Dance hadn’t been at the center of this interlude, but Acogny moved in a crouch, a hint of an African dance phrase, then the music thumped slowly as the lights dimmed. Each woman went to the side of the space with a pole and walked back into darkness. The music faded, then both drummed their feet as the lights slowly extinguished. Acogny made the decision for a third curtain call.
Given the major stature of what we were about to see, “common ground[s]” felt like filler, but well-planned, high-class filler. So much would soon be happening, that it seemed the choice was made to create a work in gentle contrast. The relationship between the women remained consistent, and the music swelled but the action stayed calm.
As the title suggested, “common ground[s]” imagined a peaceful, comradely world in contrast to the sexual violence of “Rite.” Airaudo and Acogny’s presence, the accumulation of decades of experience, held the work together as more than a prelude, but less than a diptych.
Savvy folk knew not to leave at intermission. The setup for “Rite” was an uncredited performance of its own. The stagehands’ carefully choreographed actions to completely transform the stage was a massive task; the workers were both on the clock and trying to beat it. Time sped up and they moved at a brisk pace.
A preparatory drop cloth, already infused with dust from the soil used during previous performances of “Rite” was spread out and hammered down. The stage hands lined up, and stomped upstage in unison to smooth out the cloth.. Two by two they rolled in large silver dumpsters of soil, seven total, that took five people to tip over. The soil was shoveled and raked to even it out, and a final raking in unison, again front to back, garnered another and a round of applause.
The most striking thing about the actual performance of “Rite” that followed, and it was stunning, was how well it was danced, and assumedly, rehearsed. There was a preternatural consciousness of the accenting and musical subtleties that gave the unison phrases even more power.
What was African about Bausch’s “Rite?” Everything, if you wished, or nothing in particular. It was landmark that this group was assembled and performed it. Still, the composition of the company didn’t change “Rite.” The dance had the same meaning as when I saw it danced by Paris Opera Ballet. It was a potent argument for a work also having an intrinsic meaning that situation doesn’t affect.
A light came up on a woman, in a filmy, sand-colored shift, lying face down on a red cloth. Other women raced on, one at a time, then several. They all lay face down. In Bausch’s anxious imagining of “Rite,” it was an erotic moment that distantly echoed Nijinsky and his Faun.
More women raced on, each one adding to the mass cluttering the stage. When the music started to tick like a time bomb, one grabbed the red cloth. They all clumped, writhing.
Six men ran on, bare-chested, in loose black pants, then a seventh, then an eighth, finally the whole contingent of 16. The power of numbers worked for both Stravinsky and Bausch. The men crossed the space on a diagonal, kicking the dirt side to side. The women passed and refused to accept the red cloth.
A slow and labored circle broke into a run. While one couple tossed and the man pinioned the woman in his arms, the rest became quieter briefly while before the men flew up under themselves. The men moved as one immense powerful organism, but with clarity and sensitivity as well as force.
A woman went to the red cloth and spread it out in the dirt. Serge Arthur Dodo lay on it. All hell broke loose with the cast running and jumping. The women began to spasm and shake; the men would touch their shoulders as if to check on them, but only for the briefest moment before being compelled to race to another woman. Couples started to hug, but meanwhile Dodo lay there, unmoving.
The men formed a tight group upstage left while the women huddled at the center. The red cloth got passed, one woman to the next. Each offered it to Dodo, now standing, but each ran away and passed it to the next woman, finding a way to not be chosen. Until it finally went to Anique Ayiboe.
All hell broke loose again. The women leaped to the men’s shoulders in another powerful unison section. Dodo was big enough to fully conceal Ayiboe as he helped her change from her original shift to the red cloth, which turned out to be a dress.
He walked her forward on a diagonal, she resisted, digging in her heels. Bausch’s “Rite” had one memorable image after another, but wasn’t merely pictorial. The dance phrases worked with the Stravinsky, and the strong dancing made them look even better.
The group stood tightly upstage left. Dodo impelled Ayiboe to the center and then lay down, face up, as she started the Dance of the Chosen One.
Continuously swirling, Ayiboe fell and lunged over and over. The look of shock never left her face; she sustained the emotion, kicking, making cutting motions, turning round herself in small jumps and racing round in exhaustion.
Bausch’s vision of that famous solo has very little jumping. It’s a long flail, but the important thing is the predicament, and Ayiboe made that very real. She wasn’t able to shake that look even during the curtain calls. Holding her face at the end as she shook, far at the back Dodo lifted his arms as he lay there and she collapsed forward as the lights went out.
No one could have made a better argument for “Rite” than this production as the best dance Bausch ever did. It could not have been danced more powerfully or beautifully, and the team, which credited three restaging artistic directors and five rehearsal directors, pulled off one of the best performances of the year. Here, many cooks made a splendid broth. The strange contradiction was the anxiety of Bausch’s worldview, contrasted with the scrupulous beauty of the execution.
Another irony is “Rite” is in one way atypical of Bausch’s work, as it was made to an unedited, unextended score. Bausch’s memorable “Orpheus and Eurydice” dispensed with Gluck’s ending. But mostly, Bausch tended to cobble together her own scores, which allowed her to ramble. Among the possibilities put forward by this production, perhaps the most ironic is that Igor Stravinsky was the best editor Pina Bausch ever had.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“common ground[s],” “The Rite of Spring”
Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY
December 3, 2023
Cover: “The Rite of Spring” at the Park Avenue Armory. Photo © Stephanie Berger.
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