Thinking it’s possible to make a Pina Bausch without the physical presence of Pina Bausch in the studio, is like trying to make a Picasso by copying Picasso.
Chorégraphies are originals in the exact same way and for the same reasons paintings are. You can’t recreate a choreographic work just by following a score, in the same way you can with classical music. The two art forms are on totally opposite sides in that regard.
The notion that it is possible to replicate on demand the thing which takes place at the meeting point between a choreographer and dancers, without the choreographer being present, is a joke.
Choreography requires the physical presence of the maker and dancers in the same space and over time. It’s this aspect and this aspect alone, that makes the work an original.
All the rest, is a fraud facilitated by how deeply choreography as an art form, is misunderstood.
But also,
Everything that is alive, is alive through the inevitability of its own death. Death is what allows for renewability. Death is what allows for new life to happen.
The poisoned cocktail of human fantasies for eternal life, mixed with the dance artists’ petty enviousness of the other art forms who produce objects and therefore, exceed the life time of their makers, sprinkled with a deep misunderstanding regarding the unique essence and primordial importance of the ephemeral aspect of choreography as a living form, has literally destroyed it over time. Dead artists’ repertoire, is the main reason why the contemporary scene is so dull, incompetent and un inspiring.
The only way to see a new Pina emerging, is by stopping to do dead Pina works all together. The fact that this notion seems so radical in the context of the current dance world, is anything but reassuring.
