Pina by Wim Wenders

"Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost"

Vim Wenders about Pina Bausch

Inventor of a new art form

  No, there was no hurricane that swept across the stage,

there were just … people performing

who moved differently then I knew

and who moved me as I had never been moved before.

After only a few moments I had a lump in my throat,

and after a few minutes of unbelieving amazement

I simply let go of my feelings

and cried unrestrainedly.

This had never happened to me before…

maybe in life, sometimes in the cinema,

but not when watching a rehearsed production,

let alone choreography.

This was not theatre, nor pantomime,

nor ballet and not at all opera.

Pina is, as you know,

the creator of a new art.

Dance theatre.

Movement

Until now movement as such has never touched me.

I always regarded it as a given.

One just moves. Everything moves.

Only through Pina's Tanztheater have I learned to value

movements, gestures, attitudes, behaviour, body language,

and through her work learned to respect them.

And anew every time when, over the years I saw Pina's pieces, many times and again,

did I relearn, often like being struck by thunder,

that the simplest and most obvious is the most moving at all:

What treasure lies within our bodies, to be able to express itself without words,

and how many stories can be told without saying a single sentence.