How the human body constructs social relationships through its actions

Romanist Matei Chihaia and DAAD researcher Ludmila Hlebovich on the "TanzTheaterDenken" conference at the University of Wuppertal

Mr Chihaia, a very unusual conference entitled "TanztheaterDenken" (DanceTheatreThinking) is taking place on 27 January in the Bergische Universität guest house. What is it about?

Chihaia: At first glance, dance and theory seem to be absolute opposites: on the one hand, the experience of the body, the action, and on the other, abstraction, the mind and contemplation. But this clear distinction has long been called into question. The French moralist Jean de La Bruyère asked in the 17th century: Why do we omit from the biography of Socrates that he danced? And a hundred years later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote a musical pantomime, Pygmalion, in which he wanted to express something that had not yet found a place in his philosophical writings. To make a bigger leap in time: Gabriele Klein, who will give the opening lecture at our conference, has found a form in praxeology to analyse how the human body constructs social relationships through its actions. Pina Bausch's dance theatre was an important impulse for this.
Accordingly, our conference not only offers a theory of the relationship between dance theatre and thought, but also links them - so there will be lectures by academics from various disciplines, but also a dance workshop with Çağdaş Ermiş, a dancer from the company, and a panel discussion in which Barbara Kaufmann, rehearsal director of the Tanztheater, and Valentina Paz, a Chilean choreographer who has worked with the company, will talk to Fabienne André, who is herself a dancer and dance teacher. And this link between practice and theory is also expressed in the title "TanztheaterDenken", in which the two words merge seamlessly.

In their information text on the event, which they wrote together with Marion Fournier, Ludmila Hlebovich and Valentina Paz Morales, you write: "Dance theatre... has inspired forms of thinking and is itself a performance and a way of thinking." Can you explain that?

Chihaia: This formulation comes from Dr Hlebovich, a philosopher at the University of La Plata, Argentina, who is researching the aesthetics of dance theatre this winter semester on a DAAD scholarship at the school of humanities and cultural studies. So I would like to pass the question on to her.

Hlebovich: Yes, I meant the following: Dance is not only in itself a specific form of expression of thought, but it also raises questions that are directed at other disciplines. In this context, it is crucial that when we look at dance in different academic ways, we take into account that dance and its protagonists - dancers and choreographers - produce their own theoretical productions alongside their practice, their techniques, their works and what they show to the audience: Notes on rehearsals, projects, writings about dance itself, autobiographies and the like. As we know, although Pina Bausch rarely spoke at length about her work, she gave numerous interviews, lectures and talks, as did the dancers. In addition, dance as a discipline has its own history, and Dance Studies brings together various research on it from a systematic and historical perspective.
At the same time, if we look at the relationship between dance and other disciplines in general, it turns out that increasingly not only does dance draw inspiration from philosophy, sociology, history and literature, but that these disciplines also offer studies on dance. In doing so, they recognise what dance sets in motion with its ways of writing, its methodology and in the formulation of research questions and answers. There are even various projects in which researchers and artists work together. In view of these points of contact, the event creates a space for encounter and reflection between the University of Wuppertal, Tanztheater Wuppertal and anyone interested in these topics.

Chihaia: Incidentally, this is not the first event of its kind. My colleague Barbara Rüdiger-Mastandrea led a whole series of projects in the school of mathematics and natural sciences that dealt with mathematics and dance theatre. Basically, our event continues this idea that dance theatre and science have a lot to say to each other and takes this idea through other disciplines: Dance theatre helps you think.

Pina Bausch herself says about dance theatre: "It's about something in which we can meet." How do you understand that?

Chihaia: The social function of theatre is an interesting phenomenon. In ancient Greece, theatre and democracy were intertwined. But that is by no means the end of the community-building effect of theatre: think of carnival processions and nativity plays. Totalitarian states are the first to ban theatre or try to control it because it not only literally opens up scope, but also allows people to experience themselves as an active community in the contemplation of action. Theatre thus combines the experience of community with that of freedom. Anyone who has ever been to a dance theatre performance knows this feeling.

Hlebovich: Exactly, I think such statements by Pina Bausch allow us to reflect on the community-building power of dance and gestures. Pina Bausch's works are full of gestures that bear witness to her famous concern: it' s not how people move that matters, but what moves them. At the moment of the works' creation, this concern is translated into hundreds of key questions that Pina Bausch asked the dancers during rehearsals and which they had to answer from their own everyday experience.

The gestures that emerge from this way of working convey experience, and this attempts to relate to our own experience as spectators. Furthermore, this form of creating community also harbours something interesting: Not everyone interprets the same gesture in the same way. This is precisely why a single scene can evoke laughter in some and deep sadness in others. It is, I think, an encounter in which - not without tensions and contradictions - that which unites us and that which sets us apart coexists.

Pina Bausch's dance theatre has become the subject of research. Among other things, it is about exploring the relationship between language and movement. In her acceptance speech when she was awarded the Kyoto Prize in 2007, Pina Bausch said of her new way of working: "So I asked them (the dancers) the questions I had for myself. This way of working was born out of necessity. The "questions" are there to approach a topic very carefully. It is a very open way of working and yet a very precise one. It leads me to many things that I couldn't have thought of on my own." How do you approach research like this?

Hlebovich: This way of creating, which is based on questions posed to dancers of different nationalities and cultures - but also on questions about different cultures when we think of co-productions, for example - leads to pieces that do not propose a linear plot, but a multitude of short stories. These raise many more questions for us as spectators: What aesthetic relationships are created on stage? Which social relationships are portrayed, criticised, demanded or assumed? How are the connections formed between different cultures, between the human and the non-human, between different physicalities, generations and ages?

Pina Bausch once said that she wanted to find a 'language of life' with her dancers. Did she succeed in this?

Hlebovich: I think the works of Tanztheater Wuppertal succeed to a large extent because they not only have extremely talented and trained dancers and actors, but also because they are fundamentally based on everyday experiences, not on great stories or characters, but on the most mundane things such as preparing breakfast or saying goodbye to someone, but also on the most shared feelings such as fear or nostalgia. And then there is Pina Bausch's sensitive and sharp eye, which assembles the images or fragments of images - first together with the stage and costume designer Rolf Borzik, later with Marion Cito and Peter Pabst - that each of us can then relate to our own life experience - but does not have to.

In addition to academics from Argentina, Chile, France and Germany, choreographers and dancers as well as spectators and students are also taking part in the conference. How did this colourful research community come together?

Chihaia: Ms André is doing a doctorate in educational science and is also a coach at Tanzhaus Wuppertal, Dr Fournier, a dance theatre expert, has worked as a lecturer in Romance studies in Wuppertal, Ms Montabord, a French art historian, is a specialist in the relationship between avant-garde art and dance, Dr Hlebovich, a philosopher from Argentina, has been to Wuppertal three times for research visits on Pina Bausch, Dr Paz Morales lives here in Wuppertal because of her proximity to the company, although she works as a choreographer in Chile. It is the common gravitational field of dance theatre and university that has brought us all together here on the Wupper.

There will also be a debate about dance and politics. How political can dance be?

Hlebovich: As political as art and culture can be! In an interview, Pina Bausch is asked about the connection between the collapse of a huge wall in Palermo Palermo, a piece that premiered on 17 December 1989, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her answer is not direct, but skirts around the issue. Above all, she emphasises that what she wants to convey is to be found in the performance itself, and that what is presented there is something that the audience has to experience and respond to. In her words: "The wall is something different for everyone on every day." This invites us to reflect on the political dimensions contained both in the works themselves and in the way Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch works, and how pieces created decades ago are nevertheless closely connected to the issues that concern us today.

Chihaia: I already started to say something about the relationship between theatre and politics in an earlier question, and I would like to add something about dance. The French Sun King, Louis XIV, was known to be a great dancer, and his name comes from a ballet in which he represented the sun, and around him other nobles, members of the court, moved as planets. Dance therefore served to represent a system of rule that was centralised and absolutist. And dance still has this function: to physically represent political relationships and make them tangible. The mass dance spectacles in North Korea, in which everyone performs exactly the same gestures, the shift of this totalitarian dynamic into the digital space through TikTok, where the individual body is also controlled through prescribed movements, illustrate a loss of political freedom. Conversely, dance theatre stages the body in a way that makes it possible to reflect on the disciplining of the body by society, to think about possibilities for action and scope, and to encourage the audience to try them out. It is no coincidence that all generations appear in Pina Bausch's work, including children with their unique ability to playfully question our mores, i.e. "what is appropriate".

Pina Bausch died in 2009. How relevant is she today?

Chihaia: Dr Hlebovich has just written an essay on this very topic, one of the results of her research stay at the University of Wuppertal.

Hlebovich: Yes, it very much depends on what we mean by "current". We don't have to mean the latest trend in dance, but rather the past that resonates today, that attracts attention and is further developed or critically revised.

In this context, the work of the Tanztheater Wuppertal is exemplary: Although Pina Bausch died in 2009 and her works have since gone down in dance history in a certain sense, the company continues to perform her repertoire, new productions are created and, as we saw last November with Kontakthof-Echoes of '78 under the direction of Maryl Tankard, peculiar, unsettling re-positionings (re-stagings or re-enactments) of the works are proposed that make us think not only about the present (with its fragility and strength) of this dance piece, but also about ourselves as viewers: What do we want to see and what do we see when we look at the works of a dance revolutionary? Paradoxically, this keeps the spirit of Pina Bausch's dance theatre alive. What I mean by this is that Echoes, a performance that speaks of the transience of artistic creation, makes us think and moves us today in the same way that Pina Bausch was able to do. This inner movement does not answer all questions, but raises new ones. It is a good invitation to reflect, to elaborate and to exchange perspectives within the framework of a conference, between the humanities and social sciences together with dance studies in association with members of the company and other guests, for whom the Tanztheater Wuppertal is part of their everyday life.

Uwe Blass

Prof Dr Matei Chihaia studied Comparative Literature, Romance Studies and Philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and at the University of Oxford. He has been teaching French and Spanish literature at the University of Wuppertal since 2010.

Dr Ludmilla Hlebovich is a DDA guest researcher from the University of La Plata in Argentina.