Boris Charmatz had renamed his choreographic center in Rennes somewhat grandiosely the Musée de la danse, but beyond the intellectual claim made, there were no lasting curatorial effects to be seen.
Many participants from the Senegalese and European partner institutions of the program “Common Ground(s) / The Rite of Spring”, which is currently touring internationally, attended the first Wuppertal premiere of Pina Bausch's dance theater under his direction.
In Wuppertal, Charmatz has added a new line-up of “Café Müller” to the program.
The evening in the opera house begins with the choreography for six dancers to music by Henry Purcell – “Dido's lament” and other arias.
Originally it was Pina Bausch who groped her way onto the stage in the dark, barefoot, long ballerina arms stretched slightly forward with palms up, wearing only a long, low-cut shirt with spaghetti straps.
Her hair carelessly tied back, she walked like a sleepwalker into the room, which presents itself as an enclosed cafe full of dark wood tables and chairs.
Taylor Drury looks very much like Bausch physically, which must be shockingly similar to some who have seen the original cast.
Like Bausch, she deliberately simply enters the labyrinth, which is all the more frightening when she bangs against the first piece of furniture like a bird against a glass facade.
But almost at the same time you are also irritated, because aren't sleepwalkers usually adept at avoiding accidents?
Turn on the light!
Turn on the lights, one thinks heretical, but the dancer has her eyes closed, so stage lights wouldn't help.
For half an hour, the motif of collision with objects from the inanimate world is repeated.
No matter how often the men can throw themselves in front of the wandering women in an attempt to save themselves and tear the furniture aside.
Then they just crash into something else.
There's also a revolving door that Taylor Drury goes in circles with for quite a while.
In addition to a second woman in a shirt and the men, there is a woman with a curly red wig, coat, 1940s dress and pink heels.
She tiptoes through the scenery on them.
A man lifts a woman across the arms of another man as if to say, take her, look.
But the woman keeps falling down, he keeps picking her up.
She ends up jumping into the man's arms a few times of her own accord, only to slam back down to the ground.
Plexiglas panes surround the scene.
Against them, a couple bangs alternately and mutually.
In the end, Taylor Drury is handed the wig and put on the coat and stumbles on, perilously close to the abyss of the orchestra pit where the musicians and singers are sitting.