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While tanztheatre choreographers differentiate themselves on the principles of classical and neoclassical ballet, they generally work with ballet-trained dancers in companies within the municipal repertory system. Because tanztheatre choreographers are depednent on the repertory system’s patronage, they must accept its orientation toward ballet. They both resent this orientation and exploit the values of their dancers’ daily discipline.

Pina Bausch has evolved the most distinctive and internationally renown form of tanztheatre. Directing the Tanztheatre Wuppertal since 1973, she has evolved a large-scale improvisational performance mode that long ago transcended its specific sources in her training with Kurt Joos at the Folkwang School (1955-59) and her studies at Julliard in New York (1960-61). Like her contemporaries in theatre, Bausch combines a virtually rich production style with techniques drawn from Stanislavski and Brecht; the result approaches Artaud’s idea of a theatre of cruelty. Her performers employ alienation techniques, undercutting the spectator’s sympathetic identification by presenting their role-playing as self-consciously theatrical. Bausch’s theatre of cruelty effects a peculiar catharsis, for the experience of the wrok leaves the spectator drained, but with non sense of resolution.

Especially unresolved are the images of gender roles and sexual relations. Bausch shows men and women locked into power plays and obsessive patterns of physical and emotional violence. The women, often dressed in old-fashioned formals and high heels, become sex objects and sexual victims, while the men, often dressed in black tuxedoes, become sexual oppressors. At times, the images reverse: men become the victims and women the victimizers, or the men dress in drag and become narcissists, competing with the women to become sex objects. The images of masculinity and femininity are never idealized, for Bausch presents no independent yet caring women, no strong yet sensitive men. Rather, she frames the images of gender roles in the boundary zone between reality and fantasy.

In earlier works, Bausch respected the traditional limits of choreography by setting dance to a continuous musical score. Hence, Afterzero (1970) and Actions for Dancers (1971) were set to music by contemporary composers, Ivo Malec and Gunter Becker, respectively. A series of dances set to classical compositions followed: Wagner’s “Bacchanale” from Tannhauser (1972), Gluck’s Iphigeni on Tauris (1974) and Orpheus and Eurydice (1975). During the same period, other works, namely Ich Bring Dich Um Die Ecke… (1974) moved toward a fusion of dance and theatre. Bausch’s performers began not only to execute choreographed movement sequences, but also to play theatre games, to sing and tell stories, and to project shifting character roles.

The works that followed - including Bluebeard, Kontakthof (1978), Arien (1979), 1980 (1980), and Gebirge - charted the contours of Bausch’s mature mode. Interestingly, this mode juxtaposes two extremes of scale, the monumental and the intimate. These dances comprise huge assemblages of fragments and push the performers’ and spectators’ endurance beyond the usual limit of a two to three hour performance. Everything about the work is monumental, their duration, the size of the theatre space opened to the opera house, the 20 or more dancers always on stage, and the multi-focused, chaotic quality of the stage action.

Yet, at the same time, a definite intimacy characterizes the works, an intimacy that results from the use of improvisation as part of both the choreographic process and the performance structure. Never alone on stage, performers are always interacting and responding to one another and to the stage environment. They constantly shift from one role to another, and yet, paradoxically, each dancer projects a coherent identity. Especially when the performers break the proscenium, spectators feel an intimate connection with them as people. This scene of intimacy contradicts the works’ monumental scale.

Each work creates an environment often defined through distinctive floor coverings—dead leaves in Bluebeard, water in Arien, grass in 1980, dirt in Gebirge. As each work progresses, the dancers mark and are marked by their environment. Their hair becomes entangled with dead leaves, their clothe become waterlogged, their skin becomes smeared with dirt. They bring on objects and then discard them - chairs, pieces of clothing, toys. Other objects appear on their own accord and add to the accumulation of things on stage. The environment is constant, remaining essentially the same at the end as at the beginning, except that it becomes worn, littered, used up.

Discarded costumes often appear among the stage debris. In fact, constant costume changes mark the performers’ shifting roles, suggesting that the performers’ roles are like costumes to be put on and taken off at will. The performers often dress and undress onstage, frequently assisted by one another. At times the performers, usually women, are forced into layers and layers of costumes. The women become paralyzed by the layers of clothes, paralyzed by the signals of gender identity.

Bausch’s work cannot be reduced to the theme of role-playing. Indeed, her works deliberately defy any single, reductive interpretation, even as they demand to be interpreted. Bausch’s fusion of dance and theatre, however antithetical to current modes of modern dance, does not place her outside the tradition of modern dance. Although Bausch, like her American contemporaries George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham, breaks the essential connection the earlier generation effected between dance’s formal values and its social imports, she continues the tradition by recasting the paradox of interpretation. Violating one aspect of the tradition while reworking another, Bausch pushes the evolution of modern dance in a new direction.

The man who boarded our car on our night journey to Khonsar had carefully wrapped himself up in a dark blue raincoat, with his wide-brimmed hat pulled all the way down to his forehead, as if he wanted to seal himself from external contact with the world. He had a package under his arm; once inside the car, he wrapped his arms around it. During the half-hour that we were in the car together, he by no means participated in the conversation with the driver or with other passengers. Because of this, he had a hard and difficult expression. Every time that the car’s light or the light from outside lit the interior of our car, I stole a glance of his face. He had a pale, white face, a small, slender nose, with eyelids laden with fatigue, almost closing. The lines on his face expressed intent and determination as if his head were carved of stone. He only occasionally wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. Moments later, he would again submerge into deep thought.

Once in Khonsar, our car stopped in front of Madani garage. Although we were supposed to drive through the night, the driver and all the passengers got off. I took a look of the interior of the garage and the teahouse, which didn’t appear so friendly, and then moved closer to the car. To put a finish to things, I asked the driver, “As it stands, do we have to stay here overnight?”

“Yes. Let me through. We’re staying tonight. Tomorrow, at daybreak, we‘ll be taking off.”

All of a sudden I saw someone who was wrapped in a raincoat coming towards me. With a faint and calm voice, he said, “This place doesn’t have adequate lodging. If you don’t know anyone, or if you haven’t decided on a place to stay yet, you could come to my place.”

“Thank you so much, but I don’t want to be imposing.”

“I dislike formalities. I do not know you, and I don’t want to know you. And I don’t want to make you indebted to me. Since I have built a new room according to my fancy, my old room has no use now. I only think it would be a bit more comfortable than the lodging at the teahouse.”

He had a simple and frank expression, and his formality and command affected me. I realized that I was not dealing with an ordinary person. “Okay. I’m ready, ” I said, and without any hesitation, started following him. He took a flashlight out of his pocket and turned it on. A screaming, repulsive column of light shed just enough light to illuminate our footpath. We passed through several low and high alleys in between the clay walls. Everywhere was quiet and calm. A certain numbness and peacefulness would influence one’s mood. You could hear the water. A cool breeze that was moving through the trees was hitting our face. Light beams from two or three houses in the distance were visible. A little time elapsed. We were moving in silence. To get my stranger friend to talk, I said, “This should be a nice town.”

He seemed startled by my voice. After a little pause, with a low voice he said, “Of all the cities I’ve seen in Iran, I picked Khonsar, not because it has lots of farms or orchards or water, but more so because it has kept its expressions and atmospheres of old. Because the way these alleys are, in between the cracks on the walls and the tall quiet trees, the old air still lingers, and you can smell it. And it hasn’t lost its down-to-earth hospitality. This place is far from everything and isolated. This creates a more poetic situation. Newspapers, cars, planes, and trains are all disasters of this century. Especially the automobile, that carries along with its noise and dirt and dust, the mentality of the lowlifes to the remote villages. It forces trendy thoughts, warped styles and senseless imitations into any holes.” He kept flashing the light on the windowpanes of the houses and saying, “Lovely. See? All hand-carved windows.” Houses spread apart. “You can smell the earth. You can smell the wheat. You can smell the excrement of the life. You can hear small birds and hummingbirds. Simple, old-fashioned and mischievous people remind you of a lost world. It pulls you out of the hustle and bustle of the newcomers of this world.” Suddenly, as if he noticed that he had invited me, he asked, “Have you eaten? Have you had dinner?”
“Yes, in Golpayegoon, we had dinner.”

We passed by a few creeks. And at last, close to the mountain, he opened the door to a courtyard. We both entered and got in front of a newly built building, entered the small room that had a collapsible bed, a table, and two comfort chairs. He lit the oil lamp and went to the other room. A few minutes later, he returned wearing a pajama that had the patterns of tropical flowers. The color of the pajama was flesh-colored. He turned on another lamp and opened a parcel that he had with him. Then, he took out a red funnel-shaped lamp and placed it on the table. After a little pause, as if he was hesitant to do something, he asked, “Would you join me in my room?” He took the lamp, we passed through a narrow dark hallway that had a slab ceiling built in curling shapes. The ceiling and the walls had an ochre color. The floor was carpeted with a red gilim. We passed through, and he opened another door. We entered an area that had the shape of an oval. Aside from the door that opened to the hallway, it had no visible opening to the outside world. It had been built without any angles or geometric lines. All the walls and the ceiling and the floor were covered with maroon corduroy. I almost lost my breath due to the heavy scent of a certain perfume that was filling the air. He put the red lamp on the table and sat on top of the bed in the middle of the room, and pointed towards me. I sat next to the table, on the chair. On the table, he had a glass and a pitcher of yogurt drink. With amazement, I was looking at the surroundings, imagining to myself that without a doubt, I was trapped by a sick, crazy, maniacal person and that this room was his torture chamber, painted the color of blood so that his crimes would not be discovered. There was no opening to the outside to scream for help. I kept waiting to be hit on the head by a club, or for the door to close up, and for an attacker to appear and to pierce me with a knife or a bullet. But he kept asking with his mild manner, “How does my room look to you?”

“Room? Excuse me, I feel like we are sitting in a plastic bag.”

Without ignoring what I said, he asked again. He then said, “My food is milk. Would you like some?”

“Thank you. I already had dinner.”

“A glass of milk won’t hurt.” He put the pitcher and glass in front of me. Although I didn’t have the appetite for it, I poured some milk and drank. Then he himself poured some milk in the glass, very slowly sipping on the rest of the milk. He rolled his tongue on his lips as if he was searching for a certain memory. In front of the red light, his young, pale face, short flat nose, plump lips had taken on a lustful appearance. He had a long forehead with a dark protruding vein across it. His chestnut-colored hair fell over his shoulders. As if talking to himself, he said, “I have never shared others’ happiness. Feelings of hardness, or self-pity, or misfortune have always blocked me. Life’s suffering, its figures. But the most important of all these problems is putting up with people, the pain of the rotten society, the pain of provisions—all of these, at all times, keeps us from awakening toward our actual existence. One time, I arrived at that. I wanted to imitate others. I realized I was ridiculing myself. Whatever people consider pleasurable, I tried. I came to the realization that others’ happiness was not for me. Felt like everywhere and always I am a foreigner. I have no connection with the rest of the people. I couldn’t copy the life of others. I always told myself, ‘Some day I am going to escape the society, and in some village, or in some faraway place, live in isolation.’ But I didn’t want to make isolation a means for fame or some entrepreneurship. I didn’t want to be indicted by someone’s thinking or become his or her follower. So finally decided to build a room according to my fancy. Some place where I can be with myself, some place where my thoughts won’t go astray. See, I was born lazy. Work and ambition is for empty people. In this way, they want to fill the void within themselves. It’s for pitiful people who come from under the bushes. But my ancestors, who were empty people, worked a lot and suffered a lot. They thought and perceived but alas, passed time in laziness. This void was filled in them, and they passed on all of it to me. I’m not proud of my ancestors. On top of the fact that there are no classes in this country, like elsewhere. Take any of these lofty people and analyze two or three generations of ancestors before them: you find that they were thieves or pirates or court clowns or loan sharks. Besides, if we go way far back into the ancestral line, after all, everybody goes back to gorillas and chimpanzees. But what’s at stake is that I was not born to do anything. The modern newcomers of the world, according to their own selves, only can posture within such a world. They have made a society according to their fancies and greed and lust. And even in the slightest of life’s duties, you have to swallow their dictated rules. In such slavery that they call ‘work,’ within which everyone has to beg them for their natural rights, in such a world only a mob of thieves—senseless, shameless, and sickly—have the right to live. And if someone is not an ass-kisser, thief and inferior, then they tell him that he is not tolerable. Oh, the pains I’ve had! The inheritances that have bent my back! They can’t understand. The aches and pains of the ancestors were still in me, and I could feel the nostalgia of this past within me. Like the winter animals, I wanted to hide in a burrow and plunge into my own darkness and get into shape within myself. Exactly the way that pictures reveal themselves in the dark room, that which gets suffocated due to hustle and bustle only reveals itself in darkness and silence. This darkness was inside me. In vain I tried to heal it. What I regret the most is, for a while, for no reason, I followed others. Now I realize that the most valuable part of me is this darkness, this silence. This darkness is in the depth of every being. Only when we isolate ourselves from the world of appearances, it reveals itself. But people try to escape this darkness and isolation all the time. They close their ears to the sound of death. They destroy their own personalities under all the hustle and bustle. I don’t mean that I’ve become enlightened, like the Sufis. Quite the contrary, I expect the evil’s descent on me. However I am, I want to awaken as if I was within myself. Shiny and empty intellectuals nauseate me. And I no longer feel needy for the basic necessities of this life, dictated according to the wishes of the thieves and smugglers and the inferior money mongers to whom I lose my own will and personality. Only in this room can I live within myself and not lose my forces. This darkness and this brightness of red are necessary for me. Couldn’t sit in a room that has a window behind my head. It seems that my thoughts would become disjointed. I dislike brightness and daylight. In front of the sun, everything becomes normal and characterless. Fear and darkness is the origin of beauty. A cat in daylight is something unnoticeable, but at night, in the dark, its eyes shine and its hairs sparkle, and its movements become more mysterious. A flower bush that seems unnoticeable and covered with spider webs in daylight appears at night as if certain secrets are flowing about it. It gets a peculiar expression. Daylight awakens all the creatures and maintains them. It is in the darkness and at night that all ordinary things becomes mysterious. All the lost fears are awakened. In the darkness, people sleep but can hear. The person himself is awake, and the real life starts then. People are free of their lowly needs and journey into the metaphysical realm, remembering things that they have never discovered.”

After this rich speech, he was suddenly quiet. It seemed the purpose of his outpouring was for his justification. Is this person a bourgeois child tired and cut off from life, or had he some strange illness? In any event, he didn’t think like ordinary people. I did not know how to answer him. His face had taken a certain look. The lines that crossed his lips became deeper and harder. The vein on his forehead had swollen. When he talked, his nostrils trembled. The paleness of his face under the red light gave him the look of fatigue and depression. It looked like a head made of clay. It contradicted the impressions I had gathered from him in the car. When he lowered his head, a fleeting smile crossed his lips. Then, as if suddenly realizing, with a severe and mocking look that was not found on him before, he said, “You are tired and traveling. I kept speaking of myself.”

“ Anything that anyone says is of oneself. The only truth that exists for anyone is about his own person. We all speak of ourselves inadvertently, even with regards to external issues. We express our observations in others’ tongues. The most difficult thing to do is for one to be able to state the truth as it is.”

I regret my answer because it was very meaningless, irrelevant and uncoordinated. It wasn’t clear what I was trying to prove. Perhaps my intent was to suck up to my host indirectly. But without paying any attention to what I was saying, he placed a pained look on me for a few seconds. Again, his eyelids lowered. He rubbed his lips with his tongue as if he wasn’t aware of me and was probing another world. He said, “I always wished to provide a comfortable place according to my fancies and wishes. Alas, the place that someone else had built was useless for me. I wanted to be in myself, within myself and inside myself. So I liquidated all my belongings, moved to this place, and built this room according to my own designs. Brought all these corduroy curtains with me. Have arranged all the details of this room myself. Only forgot about the red lamp. Alas, after I placed the order for it to be built in Tehran, I received it today. Otherwise, I do not wish to leave my room or to socialize with anyone. I have even restricted my diet to milk so that in any position, lying down or sitting down, I could consume it and would not need to make food. But I made a promise to myself that the day that I am at the end of my means, or I would have to look for others for my means, I would finish my life. Tonight is the first night that I am going to sleep in my own room. I am a fortunate person that I have reached my dreams. A lucky person. How hard it is to imagine that. I could have never imagined it. But now, I am a fortunate person.”

Silence fell again. In order to break the uncomfortable silence, I said, “This effect that you are searching for is like an infant inside a mother’s womb where, without hustling and bustling and sucking up to anyone or anything, in between the warm soft red shelter as folded on itself, slowly drinking mother’s blood, all its wishes and needs are automatically provided. This is that nostalgia for the lost havens that are at the depth of every human being. Someone who lives inside oneself and within oneself, maybe it is some sort of a death wish.” As if surprised that someone would interfere with what he was saying, he cast a mocking look at me and said, “You are traveling and tired. Please go to sleep.”

He picked up the lamp and directed me to the hallway, pointing to the room that we first arrived at. It was past midnight. I took a few breaths in the fresh air as if I had just left an infected aquifer. Stars were shining in the sky. I asked myself, ‘Was this an encounter with a mad and neurotic person? Or an encounter with an exceptional person?’

The next day, a couple hours before noon, I woke up to say goodbye to my host. As if I was an unworthy person at the footsteps of a temple, I slowly approached his room and knocked at the door. The hallways were dark and noiseless. I tiptoed into the special room. The lamp was burning on the table. I saw that my host, with the same flower print pajamas, hands covering his face and legs hugged into his belly, was lying on the bed like an infant inside his mother’s womb. I went closer, touched his shoulders and shook him, but he had become frozen in that position. Anxiously I left the room and went toward the garage. I didn’t want to miss my ride. Had he reached the end of his means, according to himself? Or, did he become scared of this aloneness that he had praised so much and wanted companionship of someone on the last night? After all this, maybe this person was truly fortunate and wanted to extend this fortune forever to himself. This room, his ideal room.

Translated by Fereydoun Sadeghzadeh. Originally published in Left Curve, No. 30. Copyright 2006.