Bausch / Platel / Mahler

With her early work Adagio, Pina Bausch created a haunting choreography set to the first movement of Gustav Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony. The music, composed during a profound personal crisis, oscillates between ecstatic joy and heart-rending sorrow. Bausch constructs a poetic universe in which seemingly everyday encounters and simple gestures take centre stage. The dancers experience extremes: from rapture to despair, from resistance to surrender. In doing so, they touch upon what fundamentally makes us human.

Alain Platel, Bausch’s artistic heir, is creating the new production Soûl (French for ‘drunk’) with a few dancers from Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. Like Bausch, he draws inspiration from Gustav Mahler. The early symphonic poem Totenfeier, which would later be transformed into the first movement of the Second Symphony ‘Auferstehung’, is a monumental funeral march. Gentle, almost pastoral moments of hope resound through the sombre score. Within this arc of tension, Platel poses an urgent question: could a slight drunken haze make this world more bearable?