My bucket list includes the wish to see every available work made by Pina Bausch and danced by the company that bears her name. Sadler’s Wells has staged 20 of her works (plus two made for the company by others). My current total has stood relatively still – at 30 different productions – since before the pandemic.
I have seen Nelken a handful of times but the last was on this stage in 2005. The two decades that have passed since then have seen tumultuous changes, including Bausch’s death in 2009. After several new directions the company is now under the leadership of Boris Charmatz, effectively now as a merger of Tanztheater Wuppertal with his own company, Terrain. So, how, I wondered has Nelken (German for Carnation), one of several works that might be regarded as Pina’s signature pieces, fared through all these changes?
Nelken occupies an important slot in the Bausch timeline. It came just two years after the death of her partner (and artistic collaborator), Rolf Borzik, and a year after the birth of her son (also Rolf) with Ronald Kay. Peter Pabst succeeded Borzik as Bausch’s designer-of-choice and as with all their productions, Nelken starts with a BIG visual statement: a “field” of some 7,600 silk facsimiles of pink carnations adorning the stage. Since there is no curtain to hide the carnations, it pays to get into the theatre early and soak up their impact before the performance begins (I have never seen so many people taking pictures of the stage before a show)! The trampled carnations stayed as a leitmotif throughout the performance, the only other set design being two 10m tall watchtowers and, midway through, the onstage construction of two structures comprising large cardboard boxes.
It seems at first that the carnations are an allegory for innocent, childlike pleasures. Imagine the simple joy of endless play in a field of pink flowers, knowing that, however much they are disturbed, they will miraculously pop back into perfect order when the night is over. The performers dress up (the men often cross-dressing), play games, hop around like bunnies and loll around in chairs. But this playfulness masks a darker side. When the dancers pretend to be dogs, the scene follows the carnations being guarded by a security patrol, complete with four (hilariously, barking) Alsatians; performers are interrupted mid-fun by an official demanding to see their passports and humiliating one unfortunate by asking him to remove his trousers. Performers have freshly-chopped, raw onion rubbed into their faces and a girl is force-fed oranges against her will in an episode that suggests a more sinister abuse.
Superficially, Nelken appears to be a fun-filled, carnation-infested paradise but it becomes clear that it is a society whose inhabitants are menaced by their anxieties and the threat of repression that hangs just beneath the surface. This dichotomy appears to be rooted in a visit by Bausch to Chile where witnessing a beautiful field of carnations was juxtaposed by the pervading aura of a repressive military dictatorship.
Sylvie Guillem was reported as having said that working for Pina must be ‘like joining a cult’ and her productions were always characterised by the extreme personalities exhibited by many long-standing performers through the late twentieth century and into the early years of this century. I once likened them to the “Carry-On” crew. Many were still active back in 2005 and they enjoyed a uniformity of spirit and the faux-eroticism of a seaside postcard. Just watching the variations of how they walked illuminated an understanding of the intensity of that shared belief in their mentor and her work.
Bausch required her performers to be actors, narrators, comedians, acrobats and clowns, as well as dancers. Nelken incorporates moments of intricate dance, including (albeit parodied) classical steps and innovative, ritualised, highly choreographed ensemble movement: the audience was taught a reduced version of a repetitive armography routine to define the four seasons at the close of the show.
The new cohort of Charmatz/Bausch performers are an exceptional group, each with their own personality, from the sparkling vivacity of Maria Giovanna Delle Donne to the menacing onion-chopping, passport-demanding Ashley Chen (long-term Bausch stalwart Andrey Berezin alternates in this role). His menace is backed-up by the four robust stunt men who shockingly fall in unison from the watchtowers into the cardboard box “safety net” and repeatedly jump onto and roll off a table to frighten a seated, screaming woman. Former Paris Opera Ballet dancer, Simon Le Borgne has chiselled facial features not dissimilar to Nureyev and he breaks into a breath-taking set of manèges, pirouettes and entrechats!
Some of the spoken words were lost to me, something that would never have happened with the original cast of Dominique Mercy, the amazing Nazareth Panadero, Hélena Pikon and their ilk. Much though I loved aspects of these new interpretations I found myself pining for the past. Still pining for Pina.
