Tanztheater Wuppertal has announced that the 2019/2020 season will feature nine works in 32 performances at the Opera House Wuppertal and as many again on tours to Europe and the USA, including Bluebeard at Sadler’s Wells.
General and artistic director Bettina Wagner-Bergelt explains that Pina Bausch spent 40 years creating the most magnificent dance pieces in Wuppertal and other cities all over the world. “Now we are able to choose what is most important to us and what we want to see again.”
The repertoire in 2019/2020 features nine works: 32 performances at the Opera House Wuppertal and a new edition of the Underground series with new productions by choreographers from the ensemble at the Schauspielhaus, the new Pina Bausch Centre, and the Glass Pavilion in the Sculpture Park in early November 2019.
In June there will be a new premiere, Encounters, which will bring together the ensemble of the Tanztheater and choreographers, musicians and visual artists: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Richard Siegal, Monika Gintersdorfer/Knut Klaßen, Helena Waldmann and Rainer Behr.
Photo Zerrin Aydin Herwegh
The season sees the return of one of Pina Bausch’s seminal early productions: Bluebeard, which premiered in 1977 and was performed in twelve cities until the mid-80s, including Cologne, Los Angeles, Venice, Adelaide, Paris and Tokyo. A disturbing piece in which the main character, created by Jan Minarik, draws the audience into a conflicting world of taboos, transgressions, inquisition and insight, where people seem trapped between egos, power and death as if on an unstoppable merry-go-round. Bluebeard will premiere once again at the Opera House Wuppertal with a new cast on 24th January 2020. The restaging is led by Jan Minarik, Héléna Pikon and Barbara Kaufmann. In February 2020, it will travel to London for a series of performances at Sadler’s Wells.
Another important revival will be Wiesenland, an international coproduction from 2000 which was created in co-production with the Goethe Institute in Budapest and the Théâtre de la Ville, Paris. While Bluebeard will have an entirely new cast, Wiesenland will feature a mix of first and second generation casts and from the new dancers who have recently joined the ensemble.
In October, the Wuppertal season will offer audiences the chance to revisit …como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si…, the choreographer’s last full-scale work. A Brecht/Weill Evening The Seven Deadly Sins/Don’t Be Afraid will be performed in Wuppertal in March 2020 and also in Paris at the newly re-opened Théâtre du Châtelet, together with the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
Vollmond will return to close the Wuppertal season in June 2020 following three performances at the Ludwigsburg Festival. Since she by Dimitris Papaioannou will be performed at the Borgia Music Festival in Catanzaro in southern Italy in September 2019.
Nelken will tour to Tel Aviv, Israel, in October 2019, before visiting Charleroi for three performances in December.
In April 2020, the ensemble will take Palermo Palermo to the USA for the first time as part of a three-week tour to Berkeley, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The ensemble will mark the 10th anniversary of Pina Bausch’s death with a commemorative event at the Opera House on 3rd October.