It is my ambition to see every work made by Pina Bausch that it is still possible to see. I have been stuck on 26 for some years but there is consolation in seeing revivals of the works that have survived, such as this re-run of Vollmond (Full Moon).
A massive boulder dominates the back area of the stage, a rocky outcrop bridging a shallow trench of water, initially hidden from view: the monumental visual impact of the rock commands the space in the otherwise Spartan darkness of Peter Pabst’s bleak set. It’s an uncertain place: the rock, the rain and a stream attest to an external landscape, but the performers regularly bring on chairs and other props that indicate an internal environment.
As is common to work by Bausch, Vollmond is a collection of seemingly random episodes of spoken text, humour, darkness, dance and other physical exertions but collective themes soon become apparent, concerning water, love and the age-old battle of the sexes.
Water is the most consistent theme, beginning in a sequence where two men hurry onto the stage to swish empty plastic bottles quickly through the air, making a swooshing noise to break the silence. A thin sheet of fine “rain” cascaded down after which the stream hidden in the dark upstage recesses became apparent.
The dozen performers are rarely onstage at the same time, taking it in turns to enter singly or in small groups. They swim in the water (one takes a ride down the stream on a lilo), dive into it, shower from it, fish in it, party beside it. Ditta Miranda Jasjfi washes her long hair in the stream, creating arcs of water droplets by flinging it from side-to-side. This action – by the same dancer, who also performed in the 2006 premiere – is the principal image from Pina, Wim Wenders' sensational posthumous film about Bausch, much of which is set around extracts from Vollmond.
Jasjfi is a vulnerable but remarkably tensile dancer who performed a quivering solo replete with beautiful arm movements, as fluid as the flying water droplets. Watching her felt like I was secretly observing a ritual at a moonlit waterfall in some utopian Shangri-La.
The arresting spell is interrupted by an interval, which is clearly necessary in a work of two hours’ duration. There is a significant change of emphasis in that the women were dominant in the first act variously, for example, ordering men to bring on chairs and clothing, chastising them when they got it wrong and testing how quickly a bra can be removed. One woman kissed a man with such intensity that she drove him backwards across the stage and out into the wings.
After the interval, tables are turned and when a man slapped a woman’s buttocks hard, she apologised to him; men poured water over women while filling their glasses and one forcibly kissed a woman against her will (a certain Spanish football official was just found guilty of sexual abuse for doing exactly that). Vollmond is wholly heterosexual: every romantic, sexual and erotic association is between a man and a woman.
The men were often topless or wore nondescript dark clothing while the women invariably wore elegant evening gowns and nightwear (all designed in Bausch’s trademark style by her regular costume designer, Marion Cito). The impact of water on such flimsy gowns worn without a bra created a kind of wet t-shirt contest adding to the titivating “seaside postcard” humour that underlines some of Bausch’s work. In one sequence all dancers came to the nighttime stream dressed in vintage swimming costumes. The men were barefoot, but the women still wore their stilettos.
Almost every dancer has their own outstanding solo by the rock, each of which articulates their inner character, such as the beautiful but strangely cautious dance by Jasjfi and then there is the typical Bausch dance of joy for the whole ensemble, a swaying, rhythmic, oscillating ode to the moon. It is a few moments of Terpsichorean magic.
When I first fell under her spell, I thought the magic of Bausch would end with the retirement of her initial cohort of performers. I didn’t think that anyone could replace the irrepressible, gravel-voiced humour of Nazareth Panadero – the original source of much of the fun in Vollmond – but Maria Giovanna Delle Donne is an outstanding successor. Her surreal one-liners (“What is better – one big love or just a little love every day”) regularly punctuated proceedings, delivered with a new style of sexy, elegant sparkle.
It is the unfailing achievement of great collaborative design, direction and choreography that hallmarks the Bausch legend. While Vollmond is a little dated now and it would not make my Bausch top ten, it remains an excellent example of her remarkable artistic dynasty that continues to astonish over 15 years after her death.
