The importance of movement as the medium definitely came across in both Cafe Muller and The Rite of Spring. The first performance in particular, depicting the sleepwalkers, relied on their movements (more so than the music that accompanied the piece) to present the piece. The dancing in this work was considerably less conventional. Bausch used repetition to stress the interpersonal relationships that were put on display for the audience, although I personally found this piece a bit difficult to understand at first; I was completely uncertain what to make of it. It was not until I read thoroughly through the BAM Bill about the role of obstacles (the tables and chairs) and how these can interfere with the achieving of one’s dreams. The movements in this piece were less traditional, with the inclusion of what looked like flailing body parts, slamming of bodies against walls, and constant running on and off of the stage. The second performance, The Rite of Spring, pulled a much stronger emotional response out of me as a member of the audience. The only props used in this piece were the dirt covering the stage and the red fabric, which later was revealed to be a part of the costume design. The aggressive body movements, such as the stomping, along with the music, which did a fantastic job of exhibiting the extremity of emotions, the sounds of stomping, grunting, and the heavy breathing of the dancers themselves only emphasized the exertion that they were experiencing. I noticed that once the dancer put on the red dress, she was treated as an outsider, a traitor almost. This led me to question exactly why this was and what the red dress was supposed to represent. Part of the artistic expression may include this sense of wonder that the audience is left with, not knowing exactly what Bausch intended to say, but allowing what she does say to fit into our own mental maps.
You make a very good point. Bausch leaves much of her style up to open interpretation. From my point of view, your reaction to “Cafe Muller” is exactly what Bausch wanted the audience to feel: confused to the point of helpless questioning. Just as the characters in the dance seemed to be sleepwalking, the very environment the dancers formed seemed to be almost from a dream, realistic and yet somehow not making any sense. I also like how you described the exertion of the dancers in “The Rite of Spring”, since that was also probably a huge point Bausch wanted to make in that dance. In combination to the banished girl in the red dress, as well as the extremity of emotion, Bausch may have wanted to try and show the basest of human emotion, which is trying to organize the world into roles (which the red dress did not fit into), and raw emotion.