Review: Club Amour, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch and Terrain Boris Charmatz at The Festival Theatre

Review by Lisa Lanzi

Once more at the Festival Theatre in Adelaide audiences experienced a truly ‘Festival-worthy’ event. Club Amour is a concept delivered by Boris Charmatz, a prolific dancer, creator, film-maker, author, and variously described as ‘trailblazer’, ‘maverick’ and ‘cultural provocateur’. In 2022, Charmatz became the artistic director of Tanztheater Wuppertal, the company founded by Pina Bausch in 1973.

Club Amour was presented in two parts. The first featured two works by Charmatz, Aatt enen tionon from 1996 and herses, duo from 1997. These were both viewed in close proximity upon the Festival Theatre stage with audience members invited to stand, sit, or wander the space, though few chose the latter option. For Pina Bausch’s Café Müller we returned to normal seating within the auditorium where the stage was re-set during a thirty minute break.

Aatt enen tionon (pronounced “Attention”, an elongated version of the French word Attention! :Look!) was performed by three dancers on a three level open tower of metal struts and wooden ‘floors’. Each platform was perhaps three square metres and housed one person - lower and middle level dancers were male, the top level occupied by a female. This structure was secured in the centre of the Festival Theatre stage with audience surrounding it. As we entered, the dancers were already in place and performing vague warm-up style movement to loud PJ Harvey grunge. For lighting, three over-large, opaque spherical lamps were suspended at different levels and shifted through various stages from quite dim to full brightness.

As the music faded and the audience settled, each dancer began to strip off sweat pants and underwear until they were clothed only in plain white T-shirts, genitals exposed. In the ensuing silence, the performers continued to move within their allotted space, the top level, at around eight metres conveying a real sense of danger for that dancer. The choreography was often quite violent with the three executing sometimes grotesque leaps or high kicks then flinging their bodies to the floor. The sound of flesh pounding a surface was magnified by the hollowness of the wooden platform and the squeaks of the metal structure to the point where my own dance-trained body was flinching. Other moments were defined by more sinuous balances and leg extensions or flowing sequences to the floor and inverted, sustained positions, sometimes at the very edge of the platform. At maybe three ‘rest’ points, the dancers leant on the struts or swiped perspiration away as grunge music blared again; a loud vocalisation was also heard that may have been a part syllable of the word ‘attention’: “aaaaaaarrrrgggghhhh” or “eeeeeeeeeeee” etc.

So many thoughts, ideas, and opinions drifted through my mind while I was experiencing this intimate, raw work. The proximity to near nakedness (somehow more confronting than full nudity?) suggested vulnerability and the limited, boxy spaces provoked reflections of loneliness or frustration. Aatt enen tionon felt as much like a ‘happening’ as it did choreography though on a more prosaic note, we could have been peering into a working class tenement where occupants might exist rather than thrive and where privacy is limited. Even though it premiered in 1996, images of Covid lockdowns and that bleak isolation and sense of powerlessness, came to mind. Choreographically too, the movement was strenuous and accomplished but not ‘pretty’ nor did the dancers work in unison, though sometimes the fragments were similar enough that their solo predicament was more palpable. It was also striking to have three alternate views of three different bodies in the unusual vertical space.

The following duet, herses, duo - an excerpt from herses (une lente introduction) - is a tender, abstract work that featured Boris Charmatz and Johanna Elisa Lemke. Two figures, hands clasped, slowly walk out of the darkness through a gap in the circle of spectators, and like a certain biblical couple, they are naked. Throughout the entire work the bodies are in almost constant contact and after acclimating to the absence of clothes, it was compelling to observe the sculptural shapes and intertwined constructs that emerge throughout the floor work, lifts and sillinesses.

There are alterations in speed and levels but for the most part, the pace is measured as the duet traverses the space after the two sink to the floor like humans being subsumed back into nature, or reduced to our constituent elements. Care and compassion radiate as these bodies lift, straddle, cradle, manipulate, and tread upon the ground and each other, almost as one organism until they disconnect. However, there is also a sense of gentle exploration and discovery, though not in any base sense. I was reminded of scenes where humanity might arrive on a new planet that is utopian in its welcome. All is underpinned by Stefan Fraunberger’s slightly ominous, subtle musical composition.

And so to Pina Bausch and Café Müller. I had seen this work on screen years ago, with Bausch herself performing, but witnessing it live on stage is an exquisite, somewhat surreal experience. On a stage littered with matte black café tables and chairs, a revolving door upstage, and clear panels surrounding the ‘room’, visions of desire, grief, adoration, and abandonment unfold.

As Dido’s Lament by Purcell rings out a female somnambulist figure stumbles and crashes through the space arms dangling and palms forward in supplicant fashion; a male dives and chases to toss furniture out of her way through care or perhaps fear. Another female periodically runs about in skittish, tottering fashion, wearing a reddish, curled wig, green dress, coat and shoes, seeking love or connection. A male and female violently pitch their own bodies or each other against the clear framed panels. Another couple embrace passionately only to have the woman fall through her partners arms; an imposingly tall male then intervenes to forcibly arrange the male’s arms and stance then hoists the female back into those ready arms but she falls again to the floor. This sequence is repeated many times, the speed of the choreography increasing to frantic levels - is this a ‘forced’ pairing or is the tall figure sternly repairing a relationship? Whichever way you interpret this, cruelty is evident.

Bausch left a legacy of some 50-odd creations where human gesture, repetition, and dark themes pervaded alongside some wry or absurd humour. Another of her preferences meant that her company consisted of individuals of differing ages and statures as opposed to a homogenous collection of stick figures. On this tour, the dancers working under Charmatz’ were all astonishing technicians and utterly riveting to watch. It appears Tanztheater Wuppertal continues to thrive in fine hands with an enquiring, sophisticated and adventurous spirit at the helm.