"to Pina Bausch"

A group of us went to the virtually sold out 2300 seat Southam Hall at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Canada's capital, last night. The three hour performanceof Pina Bausch's Les with a cast of ten men and ten women was mesmerizing. The setting was a bare black-box stage with a shallow depression where a pool of water formed, ostensibly from drips above. The piece comes to us from Tanztheater Wuppertal in Istanbul, and had many Turkish musical, costume and movement themes. The variety and thematic unity of the piece was wonderful to behold. For more information, photographs and reviews, just Google Pina Bausch. She is a world renowned choreographer whose inventiveness is legendary. If you have a chance to see this, I advise you to go—this is advice from a theatre person who seldom goes to dance performances.

Here is a link to my poem for November 24, "to Pina Bausch"

A note about sites for Pina Bausch: this site, Istanbul Theater Festival, is very interesting, as it links to photographs of the piece we saw, Nefes, as performed in 2003 with the same dancers.