The humanistic, monumental vision of "PINA"

I’m one of those artists who cite dance theater legend Pina Bausch as an influence without ever having seen her work live. Twenty-five years ago, as a self-described choreographer working at a newsstand, I clipped a photo from a German art magazine and tacked it on my wall. Years later when I picked up Detlef Erler’s book of photographs, Pina Bausch, I went down a rabbit hole of inspiration. It was the sort of inspiration that feels like recognition: Have I seen this image before? Seen it in my head? Dreamed it? Years before YouTube, still images of Pina’s work conveyed enough of the essence of her work to reverberate in my imagination like a very long delay setting.

But moving images convey more, especially when it comes to dance. And while I don’t generally fall for things like 3D eyewear, the technology is put to use aptly and powerfully—okay, brilliantly—in Wim Wenders’ new documentary, Pina: dance, dance, otherwise we are lost.

It was 3D that convinced Wenders he could do justice to the collaboration he and Pina had discussed for 20 years. Until then, the director felt limited by the fictitiousness of space in cinema, unequipped to render in a flat medium the immersive experience of watching Pina’s work.

As a dance film lover and maker, I appreciate how film can amplify movement in two dimensions, so the technology doesn’t make or break the film for me. 3D glasses or no, I found Pina a boon, the fulfillment of a longing, a deep well of inspiration. And for the record, Pina also has a stronger kinesthetic kick than any dance film I’ve seen.

The painful contradiction at the heart of the film is Pina’s absence from it. As I watched, I couldn’t shake the back story of the choreographer’s early and unexpected death just days before shooting was to begin. The intimate, reverent portrait of the artist makes only sparing use of her own image. The choreographer appears infrequently, fleetingly, like a shade. In one scene, her eyes fixed achingly on the camera, one of Pina’s dancers begs her to visit in a dream.

Instead, the images that make up this rich and layered portrait are of Pina’s work itself and the company of 36 dancers that survived her—the creative agents of her massive oeuvre and the people who insisted Wenders make the film when he wanted to walk away. Pina serves up generous portions of Rite of Spring, Cafe Mueller and other seminal works; like a rich meal, it’s almost overwhelming to consume all at once. Offset by eloquent commentary and archival fragments, Pina’s work explodes in three-dimensional space again and again throughout the film, its urgent humanness as evident in her epic falling phrases as in her tiny, precise-yet-casual gestures and hair-raisingly recognizable interactions between people.

Inspiration often springs from recognition of one’s self in a work of art. Does the work of Pina Bausch inspire in its copious humanness, both transcendant and lowly? A director of profound emotional depth and understanding himself, it’s no surprise that Wenders renders her humanistic, monumental vision with such dazzling immediacy. I never saw her work live, no. But I’ve seen Pina.

How profoundly she has influenced the constellation of artists who have influenced me: dance theater heroes like Jan Lauwers of NeedCompany and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, for example. In the darkness of Seattle’s Cinerama with fellow dance and theater artists who had longed for this screening as eagerly as me, I watched. I nodded in recognition, shook my head in disbelief, got the giggles, swallowed the lump in my throat. It dawned on me how much broader her legacy is than I knew. Thrilled to sense a greater understanding of my place in it all—like gazing upward on a starry night—I was one of many who left the theater bursting with excitement to choreograph, to create, to search. Especially to search.

Pina plays through Mar. 8 at the Cinerama and will then re-open at SIFF's Uptown Theatre.