Adelaide-born dancer Julie Shanahan shares her experiences working with modern dance’s greatest icon, Pina Bausch.

On June 30 2009, a sudden loss sent shockwaves through the dance world. Just five days after being diagnosed with lung cancer, the choreographer all but unanimously regarded as the most important tanztheater maker of the age, Pina Bausch, died aged 68.

During her more than 40 years choreographing, the chain-smoking, rake-thin firebrand at the bleeding edge of contemporary dance was cemented as a true genius of her craft. Her singularly penetrative vision, passing the spectrum of human experience through her unique creative prism, produced a canon of stage works that defied categorisation; beautiful but sometimes harrowing, dreamlike worlds of wonder and poignancy. Epic in scale and imagination, yet microscopically finessed, Bausch’s interrogation of the possibilities of dance delved deeper than any before her. The rigid formality of traditional choreographic models was swept aside and in its place, Bausch’s work became a crucible for creating visceral and psychological experiences that left audiences reeling and desperate for more.

 Pina Bausch in 2002

But a little under seven years...