Pina Bausch's Le Sacre du printemps is performed for the first time from a company of African dancers. In this pioneering work, with music by Stravinsky, a "chosen one" is sacrificed to ingratiate herself into the benevolence of the gods in anticipation of the return of spring.
Abdoulaye Diop, Theowen Gilmour, Dr. It all began on a beach in Senegal, between the sand and the blue sea. Around to a large rectangle the dancers, boys in dark pants and girls in white blouses. The meandering melody of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring starts, and when the rhythmic sounds of the strings enter, from those peculiar expressionist ports de bras, one arm overhead, one along the body drawing a barely noticeable curve you immediately recognize the mark of Pina Bausch.
We learned to about it first on video than in the theater this Le Sacre du printemps with African dancers. And immediately it was general enthusiasm. That general rehearsal footage in Senegal went around the dance world. From the rehearsal to the presentation of the show in the theater was Covid's involvement, and many feared there would be nothing more than that video testimony.
But now we are ready to to see them live, on the stage of the Teatro Nuovo Gian Carlo Menotti, in an enclosed venue where even more dance becomes a compulsion to move from which one cannot escape. So it was when the piece debuted to Wuppertal, more than fifty years ago.
The fact is that such a sincere and cruel look at human relations on the clash between man and woman never ceases to shock. After all, shocking, in , was Stravinsky's music and Nijinsky's original choreography that from then carries with it the sulfurous scent of modernity.
