Pina

I saw Kontakthof during the Holland Festival in 2003, when I worked there for a month, tucked away in the darkness of the main box office. At night, I could see performances, including this beautiful dance with twenty older dancers, a remake from 1978. I still clearly remember the thrill I had in Carré, one of the main theaters in Amsterdam. I knew I saw something special. Not only the concept of the older dancers, or the mere fact of seeing a show in Carré, but most of all it was special because it was a show of the Great Pina: a woman who was so well known, that I felt ashamed for not having seen any of her other performances.

Her Rite of Spring I knew, if only because three years earlier, again during the HF, I had tried to learn as much as possible about the Rite while working at the show ZIngaro. The latest version of Kontakthof was modest and fragile, but The Rite was violently, intense, exhaustive. Even behind my computer screen, I could feel the breath of the dancers, I smelled the earth.

And that happened again a few weeks ago, while sitting in the BAM cinema in Brooklyn, wearing 3D glasses, watching Wim Wenders film about her, for her, Pina. I usually don't like 3D movies that much, since I'm not so interested in the special effect. But in this movie, it was different. It was tactile, with beautiful images, where it felt like you could touch the dancers, as if they were dancing around you. Sometimes, a dress nearly blew in your face, or you had to push away a curtain to see them again. It was like standing beside them.

The images created by Pina herself of course, were very important too in this experience. Improbable situations, like a huge rock on stage, with an endless waterfall next to it, where dancers moved through the water like insects. Or a glass chamber in a forrest, where, when the dancers finally open the doors and ran out, you could smell the trees and the soil, that were only visible through the glass at first. And of course, The Rite.

She's hardly in it, in the film that bears her name. But one of the few things she says is: when there are no more words, dance starts. And with that, she expresses exactly what I felt as I watched.

PINA - Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost - International Trailer from neueroadmovies on Vimeo.