Pina – review

Berlin film festival

Like participants in a modern-day sacrament, the dance troupe Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch goes about its business, constructing elaborately beautiful movements on a bare stage, there to be recorded by the reverential camera of film-maker Wim Wenders. Bausch's death, shortly before filming commenced, lends an even more intense air of sanctification to Wenders' long-gestating project to bring the work of the pioneering German choreographer to the screen. So what does Wenders make of it? First, and most obviously, he has harnessed 3D technology – familiar enough to cinemagoers in the commercial-film sector, but not so frequently employed in the recondite world of dance film. (3D, though, has made its presence felt in some areas of live performance movies: I had to sit through a Jonas Brothers concert film in the format, and Wenders himself says he was inspired to go ahead with Pina after seeing U2's 3D movie in 2008.)

Presumably the 3D's main role is to substitute for the "liveness" of the original performance, and there's no doubt that 3D adds a lusciousness of texture to the company's already refined and polished visuals. As the camera hovers over lines of dancers moving in unison, or inspects their controlled, intense gestures, Wenders creates an impeccably stylish, almost sculptural rendering of the performance.

You can be too reverential though. Clearly the Tanztheater had its legions of devotees, and this film will be perfect for them: as near to the real thing as its possible to get, without actually showing up in the auditorium. But for non-devotees – which I would have to class myself – it's a curiously uninvolving experience. The movement is beautiful, no doubt about that; but Wenders makes no concessions. None of the dances are even named (only one title, Café Müller, is mentioned, in passing conversation), and there is almost no attempt to contextualise Bausch's work.

Wenders offers a few crumbs here and there. The principal dancers are allowed to speak a few lines in voiceover, explaining their overwhelming regard for their much-missed leader; not much of value is gleaned, except the odd hint of Bausch's working methods. Bausch herself is resurrected via judicious use of archive footage (including one rather neat sequence inserted inside a model of the Wuppertal theatre). Wenders also tries to overcome the necessarily stagebound nature of the dance by filming some of the dancers' solos in outside locations: the famous Wuppertal Schwebebahn monorail gets a major workout.Despite the opacity of some sections of the material, there's no doubting the impressiveness of what you're asked to witness. It's particularly admirable that Bausch's company spans a considerable age range — all, admittedly, are in pretty fantastic physical condition – but many of the dancers had been with Bausch for decades.And flashes of Bausch's humour shine through, leavening the high seriousness of this project: a giant plastic hippo, for example, turns up to take part in a love duet, and a clever visual trick suggests a slender woman is equipped with chunky upper-arm biceps. It remains to be seen whether dance-theatre connoisseurs will want to grapple with those cumbersome 3D specs; but they'd certainly be missing something special if they didn't.

Contributor

Andrew Pulver

The GuardianTramp

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