Pina is a feature-lenght dance film in 3D with the ensemble of the Tanztheatre Wuppertal Pina Bausch, featuring the unique, innovative and inspiring art of the great German choreographer, who died in the summer of 2009.
Wim Wenders, the director takes the audience and place it straight onto the stage, on a sensual, visually stunning journey of discovery. “A film for Pina Bausch” is the result of using the choreographs which had been carefully selected, and using some images and audio files of her life as well as 3D recordings of individual ensemble members of the Tanztheater Wuppertal who in spring of 2010 danced personal memories of the precise, critical and loving nature of their great mentor.
You find yourself starring at individual dancers while you hear their voices, their thoughts about Pina, and their learning processes with the main character of the film who is present on the dialogues, and only physically visible dancing.
In all the pieces - “Cafe Müller”, “Le Sacre du Printemps”, “Vollmond”, and Kontakthof”-there are several elements that create the idea, or help to communicate the feelings, which might give you a hint about the sense the piece should have, or the understanding of what is happening.
Architecture and natural locations have been carefully chosen to create an intense atmosphere, jumping from the theatre to the street, where the dancers perform in the middle of the road with the cars passing trough, in the tube or dancing in a glass box in the middle of the forest. This dimension of the space, in which movement and dance take place, is only depicted as a sensual journey with 3D technology.
Natural elements have a huge role in the choreographs as well as in the movie as they form part of Pina teaching and the understanding of the human and its movements. Dancing in the water, soil or blowing fallen leaves.
As well as architecture and natural elements, the garments the dancers are wearing, help to embody the concept. Flowy dresses that give lightweight to the dancers, who sometimes fall to the floor as stones. Or pure white dresses that turn into another piece as the dance goes on and the performers were dragging on the soil. Even the dresses were the constant element in a piece where there is a play between ages, dancers turning from teenagers to grown up individuals.
All this elements helped to create the scenography, and communicate what words sometimes can not. This movie is a delicious journey onto the innovative dancing that Pina created, as well a close up on the self teaching manners that Pina used to educate the dancers. “Dance for love” she only said to one of them.
You find yourself trying to give sense to a scene, with the unique capacity of your knowledge, understanding what is happening and tidying up your feelings. This is inspiring in the way you try to mix different thoughts, as well it is inspiring how the dancers self-learned and found their way.
Dance, Dance or we will be lost.
To see the trailer click here.
Juan Mora Yanes.