TheNew York Gimes Arts & Leisure§ ins i Catchin W: llid DaAUSCN aS 10Ns on the it ntu By EVAHOFFMAN GENOA, ttaly N THIS HOT SUMMER "EVE. ning, the beautiful central piazza ishuomming with excitement The fenuse, at Teast 50 Tar, is not the imminent performance of “Or plieus and Euridice” by Pina Bausch’s Wup- Bertal Tanctheater but the fact that the Wid cup mate ping aly against Spain hha just begun. Booming londgpeakers make intermittent announcements; from one of the ings flanking the square, collective shouts ie up trough the thick wale Motor bikes cruise, toting their horns, and some Stellers wild small banners Inthe midst of this mild melee, Pina Busch, sitting in an outdoor cafe, Seems entiosed ina ire of alm, At 3 she i a Stikingly elegant figure, thi and’ angule, Arbssed ants occasion in black pants with ¢ bik chemise flowing neary to her anes Her face Is auterety beautifal, planed apd like an early Picasso, with enormous Dale be eyes and graying har pulled back it from her high cheekbones. The sens iy however, cloas an alert receptiveness. Sbp contemplates the waning igh the tn: Poting Renaissance palaces, the animated Strollers, and declares that i's dificlt for ‘het to talk with so much going on. ‘ly antennae are oot al the time,” she says rising ber arms and making: move: ‘Eva Hoffman isthe author, most recently, of {Exit no History: A Journey Through te, ‘New Eastern Europe. ‘ments with her fingers as if she were indeed {gathering something from the air. “Tam all the time taking it in.” Impressions absorbed seemingly from the atmosphere might well be the beginning of a new Pina Bausch piece. Several of her productions are based on her encounters with cities — including the eponymous “Palermo, Palermo” — and, as she talks about her work, it's clear that for her, the process of creativity often involves catching intuitions ‘on the wing. “When you work on a piece, something ‘comes from the side, something important for you,” she says, making that gathering ‘gesture’ again. “You don't know why It's Important, it doesn’t fit in with your plans — Dut you have ta follow it” ‘Starting from such slender filaments of perception, Ms. Bausch has gone on to achieve international cult status as the mak- er of eclectic, Imovative and just about unca tegorizable “dance-theatrical_ extravangan. 22s. Anna Kisselgoff, the chief dance critic of ‘The New York Times, has called her “the indisputable star of neo-expressionist dance theater.” ‘In this season, which marks her 20th anni- Yersary as the’ director of the Wuppertal Tanctheater — a member troupe that ‘draws dancers from all ever the world — the town of Wuppertal is honoring her by a retrospective featuring 10 of her 25 works; her company is booked until the end of the century. And starting on Nov. 17, the Brook. Im Academy of Music will feature the Amer. ican premiere of her seminal 1085 piece, “Two Cigarettes in the Dark,” which will be Presented as part of she Next Wave Festival“This antic, fullevening work isan explora- thn of ast of spoken phrases tat occur in 160 situations. These vignettes of Tove and alienation are sketched bya dozen dancers to Inusle by Monteverdy, Brahms, Beethoven fad Purcel, aswell a 0 jze performed by Ben Webster and Alberta Hunter. inMs, Baush’sseneof hing ber career “just happened.” She was born in the Ger- man town of Solingen, end she remembers ‘ih some wistulnss the modest hotel rest Taurant her parents ran. She took ballet lasses as child and, at If, attended the Fotkswangschule in Essen, where she as taught bythe renowned expressionist chore- turaphe Kurt loose The schoo! brought togeter artists In all media and reqtred Stents to learn no only lala ballet but Iodern dance oltre and other techniques Mitluences stl evident in Ms. Bausch's work “AU, she went tothe Juilliard School in New York, where she salied wilh Jose Li ton, Pal Taylor and Antony Toder. When Sows invited her to join his company in oon, she returned and stayed with the troupe unt she was 34, And when she was shed to become te director ofthe state Supported Wuppertal theater, where she ould build a company exactly s she wished, She refuse the offer several mes, "mot Oat ofarrogance she says, but because se was “completely scared" af handling “all these people and felings” Me: Bausch stl resins a tinge of ic dence, which makes these early hesitations Plausible, she speaks in a nearly Inaudlble ‘oie and in tenous, fragmentary phases, {nif atrad of damaging he authenticity of her utterances. But there is also an inward- ness about her that bespeaks a deeper strength. Her body has a dancer's stillness. Ina way, both the delicacy and the focus of her persona stand in surprising contrast 10 ‘what she has created on stage. Her produc- tions are characterized by big and bold visual effects — a stage covered in thousands of carnations, a brick wall crumbling with a ‘areat noise, a stage flooded with water —and by a disjointed, free-associative style. She uses sounds ranging from romantic pop songs to cacophonic clangor. And the often, bizarre imagery of her dances suggests the meaningful irrationality of dreams. Tn one work, a dancer puts steaks in her shoes and proceeds to dance en pointe; in ‘another, men arrange a woman's face into & ‘smile while poking her. In “Two Cigarettes in the Dark,” performers jump into a giant aquarium filed with water and run across the stage with frying pans attached to their legs through a set that also includes sand hills and fullsize trees. While such images are provocative and ‘memorable, the subject of her works is not easy to define, and Ms. Bausch herself is distinctly unwilling to be explicit about it Cities and audiences have seen in her pieces ‘2 commentary on the relationship between individuals and oppressive sociat structures or a feminist preoccupation with the violence between men and women, Ms. Bausch’s ‘mouth, however, becomes severe at the no- tion of a sociological interpretation, 44 )§ CAN ONLY MAKE SOMETHING ‘very open,” she says. “I'm not point- ing out a view. There are conflicts between people, but they can be looked at from each side, from dit- ferent angles.” Ms. Bausch, who herself rarely dances nowadays, says she doesn’t know from where teach new piece emerges but adds that even before she begins, “already something is ready." “It's nota picture, not a structure,” but it has something to do with "where you are in Life at that period, the wishes, what you find scary.” The early stages of shaping a piece, she says, are “very naked, very sensitive.” “The dancers have to be patient with me,” she adds, “to try to follow me." At the same time, she often asks the performers to impro- vise freely, and she draws on their explora tions. Given the elusiveness of her ideas, perhaps it's not surprising that her works have been criticized fOr incoherence and lack of intll- gible themes, but over the years she has {earned to trist her own unpredictable asso- ciations. And how her works turn out, she suggests, depends partly on the personality of the dancers, on their state of mind, on how the company is working together. Despite her responsiveness to her environ- ‘ments, to different kinds of music and to her dancers, the main source of her creativity, she admits i finally herself. “I's me with my feelings — it’s always that.” For her, the attempt to understand often involves looking inward, to the sensations and minute internal ‘movements of the body. locate the_piace where physical nd perception meet, and to Tint ways of transit tho is expressive moverent Ifthe gestures and actions she invents turn out to be strange or grotesque or even vio- Jent, it may be because she is transposing to the Stage the intense drama of interior Iie. “Orpheus and Euridice,” the work Ms. Bausch has brought to Genos, is simulta: neously sung and danced to Gtuck’s opera. In this produetion, each main role is performed by adancer and a singer, and the relationship ‘between these pairs, and between Orpheus and Euridice, far from being violent, is & moving depiction of the connectedness be- ‘ween voice and body, between men and ‘women. The applause lasts for 20 minutes, and when Pina Bausch comes out on stage, the audience goes wild. with enthusiasm, ‘much as if this were the soccer match. ‘Afterward, ata_midnight supper, Ms. Bausch exchanges toasts with various per- formers. Her enormous eyes fill with pleas- lure, even tenderness. Asked whether she feeis distant from a work created two dec- ‘ades ago, she says: "I'm glad it exists. It ‘means! can move on — and ina sense, Ihave to move on. This is done, and now, on to ‘something else.” As to what that might be, she says: “I don’t know. I'm not there yet ‘AS usual, she wants to be able to follow that invisible thread that leads her through her interior labyrinths, toward her own original vision = a