Some preliminary thoughts on watching dance at WAAPA
Over 6 weeks, 10th October to 18th November 2022, I documented the reconstruction of a 1972 work by Pina Bausch, Tannhäuser Bacchanal, at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA).
Bringing the work to WAAPA was instigated by artistic director of the LINK company, Michael Whaites, in collaboration with the Pina Bausch Foundation (with the support of head of dance at WAAPA, Sue Peacock, and performance maker and researcher Renée Newman). The process was paid for by the Mindaroo Foundation and this reconstruction was led by former Tanztheater Wuppertal performers Margia Maggipinto and Ophelia Young. Two other revisited dance works, Michael Whaites’ Things that remain (2009/2022) and Meryl Tankard’s Chants de Mariage (1991/2022), were also rehearsed across this period at WAAPA, and the whole programme, ICON, presented from 11th-17th November at the Geoff Gibbs Theatre, celebrated the work and influence of Pina Bausch—see the programme here.
It’s been some time since I’ve been party to the complete construction of one work, from day one to the final performance. To see the WAAPA students rise to the occasion was a privilege. This is not an easy work. Tannhäuser Bacchanal is short, but, with 23 dancers on stage, the structure—both at the level of individual movement and small group and ensemble work—demands a lot of its dancers, not to mention the reconstructors. Marigia Maggipinto and Ophelia Young’s main visual source for the reconstruction was a 2014 video of one performance of the work. But, usefully, Ophelia Young was a cast member for that re-staging when still a student at Folkwang University and Marigia Maggipinto had been the first to try resurrecting the work in the 1990s, at Bausch’s request, from what was often referred to as the ‘ghost’ recordings of the1972 performance of Tannhäuser Bacchanal; which later helped Barbara Kaufman remount the work in 2003/4 with students at the Folkwang*. At WAAPA, hours were spent watching and re-watching sections of 2014 video on multiple tablets and a larger television across three studios. Maggipinto and Young took a week to teach all the material to the dancers, and 4 weeks to perfect the structure and style of the piece and the movement for performance. Many of the dancers were primarily ballet trained, but Bausch’s movement language for Tannhäuser, said to be a precursor to the more famous Le Sacre du printemps (1975), would offer challenges to many dancers. With its counterpoint, curved spines, lifted chests, rotated shoulders with rounded and inverted elbows, not to mention the complex staging and ecstatic nature of the action, the requirements of Tannhäuser Bacchanal are intense and exacting. But watching the 2022 footage from the first few days and comparing this with the final days of rehearsal, speaks to how far these dancers had come in just a few short weeks.
The reconstructors, Maggipinto and Young, were consummate professionals—well prepared, thorough, calm and collegial. Their approach endeared them to everyone. They won over the young dancers with their dedication, generosity and care. Coordinator of classical ballet at WAAPA, Kim McCarthy, was a great extra person to have in the room, often working with the students as a back up to perfect lifts and partner work in particular. When an injured dancer put the last show of the season in jeopardy, McCarthy’s knowledge of the work and the dedication of the students, helped Maggipinto and Young shift the structure to mask the absence of the injured cast member—this allowed the replacement dancer to go on stage with nervous confidence and for all to present the last show without a hitch.
During my time at WAAPA within the dance department I saw many people work extremely hard. There was so much to organise and realise. Seven dance works needed to be mounted: three works for ICON; a pre-ICON-show (a new work) by Sue Peacock Something About Love; and another full matinee programme called First Flight. The latter was made up of three works for first year students including two new pieces, one by staffer Andries Weidemann and one by Rhiana Katz, a graduate of the WAAPA dance programme in 2018. The other work was a remount by Peacock and Kynan Hughes: Leigh Warren’s Never Mind the Bindies. Watching from the side-lines as people made movement, rushed between multiple studios, dealt with mishaps, sourced equipment, taught class, counselled students, gave speeches and talked about their work with invited quests, worked with designers, negotiated costuming and lighting, worked with newly minted stage managers, caught up in hall ways, wrote programme notes, sourced pictures, sent emails in the middle of the night, found accommodation, looked at spread sheets, made guest lists, reviewed revised coursework, talked ‘shop’ over lunch (all the while trying to write phd theses and mark student essays), made my head spin. It also made me reflect on the relationship between the two institutional models—the conservatoire and the university—not always the most comfortable of alliances. But, despite the constant pressures that competing expectations can engender (and the occasional panic when the unexpected happened), everyone went out of their way to accommodate this strange woman sitting up the back/on the side/in the corner of various studios, filming, taking photos, downloading footage, writing in her little red book and trying to stay out of the way.
The dance staff at WAAPA are a credit to the institution. Michael Whaites dreams big, and has been able to keep the 4th year Honours Link programme thriving for 20 years—happy anniversary Link. The Linkers+1 were the dancers for Meryl Tankards reimagining of Chants de Mariage, which was originally two works. Both Tankard and Paige Gordon (a former cast member who assisted Tankard in the process) had nothing but praise for those dancers, attesting to the quality of the Undergraduate and Honours (Link) dance programme at WAAPA. Sue Peacock, with the assistance of Kynan Hughes, seemed to me to have extraordinary fortitude in the face of the challenges of presenting new or revisited work by dance professionals with first to fourth year students within an educational setting. To be able to watch this place and all these people at work was as interesting as watching one of Pina Bausch’s early, forgotten works being reconstructed.
I’m not sure where all this observing and documenting of Tannhäuser will take me. Wanting to be party to the remounting emerged from my interest in the influence of the works and performance making practices of Pina Bausch on Australian dance, dancers and performance makers (see my early foray into this area in the paper “Pina Bausch, festival culture and the impact of 1980 in 1982”). However, on the final morning before the last performance I realised that the title of the Michael Whaites’ work Things that Remain summed up the entire experience for me. In Things that Remain Whaites, performing as the ‘narrator’, and the graduating 3rd year contemporary dance students, offered a litany of residues—things left behind to remind us of the actions and efforts of living, including dance being made a-new through the repetition and reimagining of the old, in a work that was originally made in the year the instigator of extraordinary influence on both Whaites and Tankard, Pina Bausch, died. As Whaites explained, reviving this work was an act of remembrance and transmission as, once again, another group of young dancers were offered the chance to make action in response to provocations, a hall mark of Bausch’s later dance theatre process. This work, and all the other works that were reconstructed, revisited or even created anew, were put together under that influences of past experiences. Each work reminded me that the past circles and swells within the lives and bodies of us all. All those working at/with dance at WAAPA across the 6 weeks (plus years of preparation) it took to get these shows up and running were party to the presence of the past from which they offer others a future. What I saw at WAAPA, in the dance department, amongst the staff, visitors, supporters, audiences and students, was the making of more things that will remain—more things that will, and should, support the maintenance of people and processes dedicated to honouring, developing and challenging the making of dance and dancers—just as Bausch herself had done for so many years and the Pina Bausch Foundation continues to do in her stead.
*for more on the reconstruction process of Tannhäuser in 2013/14 see Stephan Brinkmann, 2014. Reconstruction as a Creative Process. Pina Bausch’s Tannhäuser Bacchana, 1972 – 2004 – 2013. A Report from the Rehearsals, in Mark Wagenbach (editor) Inheriting dance: an invitation from Pina. Transcript.