The Form of Pina Bausch

The differences in style of “Café Muller” and “The Rite of Spring” is astonishing, since both were created by the same choreographer, Pina Bausch. In a way, both are representative of her beliefs about dance, from aligning to society’s expectations to altogether destroying its sense of meaning.

“The Rite of Spring”, made 10 years earlier than “Café Muller”, features two distinct sets of groups (women and men) who fit firmly in their gender roles. The women are more graceful and seem almost lightweight and playful, while the men are more heavy-footed. This changes when they join together, forming a large, organized mass of stomping feet and heavy breathing. Then, there’s the woman in the red dress, who seems to fit into neither of these two set groups, and is thus excluded from both and seemingly disgraced. Café Muller, on the other hand, was a ritualistic mess of repetitious patterns combined with seemingly useless and potentially harmful movements, such as slamming on walls and running into chairs. Every character had their own “job” (one man kept trying to move chairs from a running woman, while another kept trying to make a couple kiss or hold each other instead of hugging), even though each job did nothing in the end. The dancing of “Café Muller” seemed to almost symbolize a dream-like insanity, with characters ignoring each other and their own environment, while “The Rite of Spring” showed a strictly organized harmony of characters who shunned those who stepped outside their role. Both dances, however, were capable of inciting strong reactions from their audience: Café Muller purposely wanted its audience to feel confused and helpless, much like the characters in the dance itself, while The Rite of Spring made its audience breathless and taken aback by the power showed by characters.