London has an intense relationship with Pina Bausch; her season at the Wells sold out weeks ago. Yet it is only now the city is seeing the two early productions which mapped out her choreographic terrain: The Rite of Spring created in 1975, and Café Muller in 1978.
They are an astonishing pairing - one hot, dark and terrifying; the other pale and elusive. Both show how Bausch, even at the beginning of her career, was able to combine movement of shocking visceral intensity with stage visions of often hallucinogenic strangeness.
In her setting of Rite she returns Stravinksy's music to its most primitive logic by covering the stage in thick dark earth and by choreographing on a huge scale. Some 32 dancers confront each other in thudding convulsive groups, ranked across a sexual divide. As they unite in great wheeling circles then scatter into a collective frenzy of coupling Bausch makes it appear as though they are galvanised by some savage, biological imperative. As they run and fall, dirt smears their sweaty bodies. By the time the chosen maiden (Ruth Amarante) is led towards her sacrificial solo she seems to be only thing standing against her tribe and their absolute terror of extinction. Her dread and her ecstasy leave us shaking.
Café Muller is a far more intimate work - based on Bausch's childhood memories of her parents' establishment. Her grown-up self (danced by Helena Pikon) re-enters the café as a sleepwalker, eyes shut tight, arms outstretched as if remembering the scene by touch.
Five other people are present - but their behaviour appears both pointless and obsessional. The action is seen as by a naïve child, but also as by an adult who understands the tragedies and disappointments the café once harboured. There is the woman (Aida Vainieri) who keeps leaping ardently into the arms of her lover who in turn weakly, sorrowfully keeps dropping her. There is the man anxious and bespectacled (Jean-Laurent Sasportes) who races through the café knocking away chairs and tables in case someone might get hurt or the second woman (Nazareth Pandero) in a red wig who ineffectually gestures kindly intentions but is unable to attract any notice
At first sight this piece looks bleak, a forensically pared down study of lost souls. Yet the way the action is layered around the wispy presence of Bausch's dream figure gives it a magical quality of remembering.
· Until February 22. Box Office: 0844 412 4300.
