This is BALLET2000’s “Special New Year Issue”, the seventh one that complements the six annual bi-monthly issues. It opens up the new year with a retrospective on the past year: the best shows, trendiest dancers, most significant companies and most creative choreographers. Each moment chosen by our editorial staff is accompanied by a photograph and a short description or comment.
Romeo and Juliet (ph. Brescia-Amisano)
by Leonetta Bentivoglio - What ideally remains of Pina Bausch (80 years on from her birth and 10 from her death)? Her legacy is a strong one and “her” own Tanztheater Wuppertal, as well as various international companies, are still performing several of her works in restagings by the original dancers. It is already clear that the German choreographer played a sensational role and belongs to the exclusive “family” of truly outstanding creators who reinvented the theatre during the last few decades of the 20th century
Last year marked the tenth anniversary of Pina Bausch’s death which occurred at the end of June 2009 in Wuppertal, Germany where she had been working since the 1970s.
Many of the works of the German choreographer (born in Solingen in 1940) are still thriving as the Tanztheater Wuppertal, presently directed by Bettina Wagner-Bergelt, uninterruptedly performs them all over the world. The current Tanztheater mixes in its “old” performers with its new ones, i.e. the numerous young dancers who have been taken on during the past decade and have obviously never worked directly with the company’s founder. Yet the energy and value inherent in Bausch’s vast repertory is such that it continues to be rock-solid and powerful, able to be handed down from one generation to the next.
