★★★★★ This 1982 masterpiece is an unequivocal demonstration of the visionary dancemaker’s enduring power.

Adelaide Festival Theatre
March 11, 2016

The flat, featureless expanse of an empty stage is a plain of possibilities; a creative vacuum into which a dramatic vision can rush and expand. But capturing a unique world in the theatre is a delicate and often fickle art, and few have ever mastered the alchemy of conjuring a viscerally charged performance space as expertly as the late, great Pina Bausch. For her, the space between the proscenium arch was a womb – a fertile, nurturing place where ideas and beauty flourish. It’s little wonder that throughout her canon of choreographic works we find extraordinary universes rooted in the natural.

Whether it be the watery veil of Vollmond, the great, verdant monolith of plants that slowly cascades like an ocean wave from Weisenland, or the earthy, primordial vista of Bausch’s superlative setting of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, rarely has the theatre been used so transcendently. Arguably one of Bausch’s most effortlessly arresting scenes is the simple, yet breathtakingly poignant blanket of pink carnations found in her 1982 tanztheater masterpiece, Nelken, and yet this...