Masterful and daring, one of Pina Bausch’s first works enters the repertoire of the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon

On her face, we can read how upset she is, crossed by mixed feelings. “It’s hard-hitting, it’s strong”, she said holding her stomach because that’s where it all comes down to. On this general evening at the Opéra de Lyon, this early admirer of Pina Bausch is like many spectators: stunned and happy to have lived so hard for two and a half hours.

If this spectator was able to reconnect with the choreographer she loves, it is because the ballet of the Opéra de Lyon has just added to its repertoire Auf dem Gebirge hat man ein Geschrei gehört (On the mountain a howl was heard). And this is an event because never before has a company other than that of the German choreographer, the Tanztheater Wuppertal, performed one of her creations. Julie Guibert, the ballet director wanted to dig another furrow with her dancers, to summon another form of virtuosity.

It was absolutely essential to include Pina Bausch in the repertoire of the Lyon Opera ballet. She is a woman who was a pioneer in what she brought out of the living. She summoned the world to a platter. The ballet had never had access to this thing.

Julie Guibert

ballet director of the Opéra de Lyon

The dancers of the Opéra de Lyon ballet have followed a long process of transmission orchestrated by three former Pina Bausch dancers, Jo Ann Endicott, Anne Martin and Jorge Puerta Armenta. “We took the time to work individually with each dancer by asking them the same questions that Pina asked us at the time”, says Anne Martin. Questions like: “Something broke, your reaction?” Or : “An emergency. Something weird in the forest. Seeing danger behind everything. Doing something to be loved. Sweetening something with a kiss.”

Pina gave the performers full freedom to respond with their imagination, their body, their voice. “It was about knitting a process from within, not just learning a choreographic form but immersing yourself in a particular emotional state”, continues, enthusiastic, the coach.

These questions have sometimes baffled ballet dancers, such as Kristina Bentz who had to imagine and perform “something that is getting stronger and stronger and cannot be stopped. It was very hard for me to answer, she confides. You feel a little disturbed but you don’t know why. It disturbed me a lot.”

“It made me go through personal states linked to my experience and my memories, says Marie Albert for her part. I was able to reinject all this experience into the interpretation of my role in the play.” But what the latter retains above all is that “in each of her colleagues, she had the feeling of seeing like hatching, a new facet that she did not know” : “Something very fragile, a form of vulnerability. I find it magnificent, she assures, because we are talking about something that hangs on a thread.”

The result on stage is striking. If new bodies have taken over the original work, they have remained faithful to its purpose. “The blood is different but that kind of vital energy is still there,” observes the tutor Anne Martin, happy to have successfully taken up the challenge of transmission.

What we are presenting is not a museum piece, it is not something that will be brought out of the trunks with dust. It’s modern because it’s embodied by today’s bodies.

Julie Guibert

ballet director of the Opéra de Lyon

There is the panic of these fleeing bodies, the awkward steps in the loose earth and the race until exhaustion. There are the sewn mouths, the forced embraces, the castaways on their raft. There is this terrifying clown looking like a lifeguard who sometimes plays the puppeteer. Is he the embodiment of our childish fears? There are bruised women and lacerated bodies. Pina Bausch summons all of our humanity to the set. And the dancers of the Opéra de Lyon ballet with her.

"On the mountain we heard a howl"Lyon Opera ballet - rehearsal photo (Jean-Louis Fernandez)

When she created this piece in 1984, Pina Bausch did not know what was happening in 2022. She did not know the migrants in the Mediterranean, the millions of Ukrainians under the bombs, the bodies of women struggling to defend the right to abortion. The immense German choreographer who passed away in 2009 felt the world with such acuteness that even today her piece resonates as if she had created it yesterday.

Pina Bausch never wished to give an explanation to her works. There is no question of providing the slightest answer. We are facing ourselves and facing a humanity that we grasp in bits and pieces, on an intimate, philosophical or political level.

Julie Guibert

ballet director of the Opéra de Lyon

If fear in all its forms is the main subject of On the mountain a howl was heard, Pina Bausch skilfully mixes the burlesque and the comical. By small touches without warning. The choreographer refused to name her ideas, her intuitions. “The piece tells what binds us to each other, analyzes the ballet director of the Opéra de Lyon. There is violence, madness and tenderness. Everything she summons is the skin of our world.”

“She comes to raise something of the order of the elusive and the unspeakable, concludes Julie Guibert. I like places where you don’t always know what you’re looking at but you’re transported and it’s beyond comprehension.”

Auf dem Gebirge hat man ein Geschrei gehört (On the mountain we heard a howl) by Pina Bausch – Lyon Opera Balletfrom June 28 to July 7, 2022


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