Cafe Muller and The Rite of Spring are seeming opposites. Cafe Muller began quietly, slowly. One may not have even realized the dance had begun, as at first, there was no bright stage lighting, only the sound of the dancer bumping into a chair brought your attention down to the floor. The piece was often very quiet, with slow movements, periodically interrupted by quick, dramatic, loud and repetitive actions. What astonished me most researching this play was the fact that Bausch made most of the dancers dance with their eyes closed. I think this speaks to the incredible amount of trust between the group, and the emotional work that goes into creating a production of the sort. I have never been to an interpretative dance performance before, and throughout the piece I was frantically searching for a meaning, a connection between the spontaneous pieces. The best connection I could relate the play to was relationships. Stumbling blindly through the darkness, moments of peace and love, but also ones of dramatic chaos.
The Rite of Spring contrasts greatly with Cafe Muller. I’d regard it as more of a traditionally choreographed dance, with a lot more, well, dance. And this is supported by David Jays’ statement, where he says, ” From Bluebeard (1977) onwards, Bausch abandoned development and progression: all her subsequent pieces are loose, unpredictable montages of scenes, strung together by free association. The Rite of Spring was set prior to her shift in development, and Cafe Muller post. I greatly enjoyed this piece, due to its set, realism, and interactions between dancers. The Rite of Spring was originally premiered in 1913 in Paris, but Bausch took said piece and transformed it into a feminist statement, where the chosen one, (the woman in the red dress), is sacrificed to the misogynistic men. And you could truly see the attitudes of the dancers on stage towards her. Once she put the red dress on, the women avoided her, seemingly disavowing her existence, while the men idolized her.
But while I’d like to say that Cafe Muller and The Rite of Spring differed in every right, that would not be correct. They both were dramatic, quick, sometimes violent displays of emotion, greatly challenging the audience in interpreting their message. And this was largely their point. Bausch herself stated, “It is almost unimportant whether a work finds an understanding audience. One has to do it because one believes that it is the right thing to do. We are not only here to please, we cannot help challenging the spectator.” Bausch tells a story with her work, and we the audience try our best to understand what she is saying. And I understand her mentality in that statement. When I am writing a script or filming, I don’t want to explicitly state my message. I try to run the audience through different emotions, clues, bits and pieces that they have to piece together. I don’t believe a message can have full impact unless the audience pieces together its meaning and conclusion themselves.
