When Pina Bausch choreographed Iphigenie auf Tauris in 1974, her work was still visibly shaped by her early years in mainstream modern dance: she wasn't yet fully committed to the text, props and stage rituals that would become her trademark Tanztheater tools. And watching this pure dance setting of Gluck's opera, you can allow yourself a heartbeat of regret that Bausch took the subsequent route she did. The range and intensity of her movement here are so remarkable, you have to wonder what other dances she might have gone on to create.
The production is staged entirely as a frame for the choreography. Its design its minimal and the singers are seated in boxes at the sides of the stage. Even though they and the orchestra, under Jan Michael Horstmann, give a ravishing account of the music, it remains the dancers who create the characters and tell the story. At its heart is Iphigenia, the priestess exiled to a foreign land; the stark keening body shapes and anxious, twisted gestures of Bausch's choreography make us feel Iphigenia's tragedy on both a mythic and an intimate scale.
Ruth Amarante, with her fierce, flayed austerity, is hypnotic throughout the two demanding hours of her role, while her captor, King Thoas, dominates the stage with the roaring energy of a Kabuki demon. The two shipwrecked men, Orestes and Pylades, are bound by a compelling, tender innocence as they dance together in almost helpless unison. Just as eloquent are the choral passages, ensembles of lyric beauty that breathe exquisitely with the pulse of the score. Yet, despite the vividness of Bausch's dance characterisations, the storytelling remains problematic. Iphigenie comes with a difficult libretto – full of flashbacks to the murderous backstory of the House of Atreus. And because Bausch disdains conventional mime and stage action, there are times when the narrative is hard to follow. I've never imagined surtitles would be needed in a dance piece before – but they would work wonders here.
One of the most dramatic moments comes when Bausch actually pauses both the music and the dance. It's the scene where Iphigenia has been ordered to kill Orestes, not yet knowing he is her brother, and it's handled by Bausch with surreal, haunting power. Orestes lies on an altar strewn with white flowers, his head tipped back into a white bath, his neck bared for the knife, as more flowers are strewn over him by a mourning priestess, held high in the air by the other dancers. It's an image freighted with love, purity and sacrifice. And it's fascinating that it prefigures exactly the style of dance theatre that would make Bausch famous in the decades to follow.
