The West Australian Academy of Arts has scored an international coup for its final dance season for the year.
The dance students will perform Pina Bausch's Tannhäuser Bacchanal, the first time the work has been performed outside of Germany, and the first time that any Pina Bausch work has been performed in Perth.
Bausch once said, "I am not interested in how people move, but in what moves them". In rehearsals, she provoked her dancers into movement by asking them to delve into their past experiences. The innovative, expressive choreography that came out of this intense process was staged with arresting sound design and unconventional sets.
Now, with support from the Minderoo Foundation, WAAPA has brought two stagers of the Pina Bausch Foundation, both former dancers in Tanztheater Wuppertal, to collaborate with WAAPA’s students to remount Bausch’s Tannhäuser Bacchanal.
un and Ophelia Young will share their expert knowledge of Bausch’s choreography with the dance students and LINK, WAAPA’s graduate dance company, to bring this classic work to the stage of the Geoff Gibbs Theatre in a program with the overarching title "Icon: An Extraordinary Event".
Widely considered to be the precursor to Bausch’s iconic The Rite of Spring, Tannhäuser Bacchanal features 23 dancers on stage performing to Wagner’s romantic, restless music.
The other two dance works on the Icon program are remounts of works by Australian dance legend Meryl Tankard and WAAPA’s very own Michael Whaites, Artistic Director of LINK Dance Company, who were both dancers in the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Tankard was a company member from 1978 to 1984, while Whaites spent five years in the company from 1995.
Tankard’s work Chants de Mariage, remounted with assistance from award-winning local choreographer Paige Gordon, features an all-female cast in an exploration of ritual, secrets, deception and sacred vows.
Whaites created Things That Remain, a gentle piece devised around nostalgia and remembrance, soon after Bausch’s passing.
Minderoo Foundation’s Director of Arts & Culture Ella McNeill said, “We are so excited that artists from one of the world’s most renowned dance companies will be coming to Perth to work with WAAPA students. It’s vital that our most promising emerging artists have access to world-class companies and teachers here in WA, and that is at the heart of Minderoo’s long-standing support for WAAPA.”
Icon: An Extraordinary Event runs from 11-17 November in the Geoff Gibbs Theatre.
For more info, go waapa.ecu.edu.au
All uncaptioned photos are of WAAPA students in rehearsal. Photos by Stephen Heath.