Tanztheater Wuppertal commissions

Posted on June 22, 2015

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch has commissioned three new works for its 2015–16 season. It has also announced plans for a new home, the Pina Bausch Centre, in the heart of the German city of Wuppertal. These are new steps for the company, whose founder choreographer Pina Bausch died in 2009.

Choreographers Tim Etchells, Ceciliea Bengolea and François Chaignaud and Theo Clinkard will work with dancers from the Wuppertal ensemble, resulting in a triple bill, which will open the season in September. This shows, The choreographers were chosen in consultation with Alistair Spalding of Sadler’s Wells, with Myriam De Clopper, artistic director of deSingel in Antwerp and Stefan Hilterhaus. As well as “preserving Pina Bausch’s legacy the company is open to new ideas and concepts,” said Wuppertal council chief executive Johannes Slawig.

Tim Etchells is director of performance group Forced Entertainment. Bengolea and Chaignaud, who have been working together since 2005, have backgrounds in club culture and classical dance, while Clinkard, who founded his own company in 2012, has already worked with Tanztheater Wuppertal dancers. Spalding, who called it “an honour and a privilege” to devise the new programme, said the aim was to give the Wuppertal dancers “a variety of different experiences… The artists we that we have chosen come from a broad range of backgrounds and experience and they will all bring their own specific approaches to the process.”

The new Pina Bausch Centre, one of 13 key projects in the Wuppertal 2025 strategic plan, will be supported by both national and regional funding, showing that the project is seen as a matter of national heritage in Germany.

Picture: Ditta Miranda Jasfi and Michael Strecker of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in On the mountain a cry was heard   Photograph: Oliver Look

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.