By the light of the moon: Pina Bausch’s Vollmond

Tanztheater Wuppertal/Terrain Boris Charmatz at Sadler’s Wells, London
February 14, 2025

The anticipation is palpable. Eleven years have passed since Tanztheater Wuppertal, directed by Boris Charmatz since 2022, performed Vollmond at Sadlers Wells, the great Pina Bausch’s final work before her death in 2009. The titletranslates to full moon, and ancient belief of the moons powers to induce lunacy are staged in a reckless assortment of love and desire.

An enormous boulder, the design work of Peter Pabst, forms a bridge across an unmoving river. Relationships are rendered elemental before it, exposed to the stubborn forces of nature. Under Bausch’s full moon, the cast of Tanztheater Wuppertal are feral, obsessive, whimsical and sultry. Desires manifests in the strangest of ways, though perhaps only so strange because an audience is privy; much of what we see in Vollmond feels exhilaratingly intimate.

The German style of Tanztheater artfully blends dramatic dance with pedestrian movements. The everyday is made ludicrous, and deeply expressive. When not dancing, in conventional terms at least – one must remember that Bausch diverted the course and constructs of modern dance – the performers engage in games of unfathomable rules and subversion. Normal romantic emotions are exaggerated – bitterness over an absent lover is represented by flames to hair and lemon juice squeezed on skin – while more abusive interactions are downplayed, monotonised in sinister ways.

The transient nature of these scenes only emphasises such cruel tones that are well matched with dry sarcasm and comically forced speech. Notably, Bausch spent many of her younger years in her family restaurant, observing the people who came and went. We are similarly static viewers and are never treated to more than a few minutes of a scene, nor an explanation.

Moments are often rudely interrupted by the next, with jarring soundtrack changes to go with it. The music hopscotches across genres, including Jun Miyake’s mysterious ‘Lilies of the Valley,’ created especially for Wim Wender’s documentary on Bausch. Oddly, longer sequences are accompanied by the type of benign tracks played when on hold on the phone, making some scenes all the more abstract.

Solos are lengthier, and far more tangible than the acting. The silence of the opening moments of Vollmond is burst by a flighty, anguished solo by Dean Biosca followed by pleasurably messy contact that see’s bodies collide and limbs flail. A pair run round and round in circles, one dragging the other by the sleeve, roles that later, are reversed. Taylor Drury writhes her arms, seemingly maddened by the memory of a touch that lingers on her skin. Hands throughout are intricate and active, heads often thrust back with hair flying loose, the epitome of drama, of freedom. Many phrases feature a frenzied tapping of the fingers on the body that could mean desperation or excitement, or both. Each solo digs for something within, an internal plight mined, and they move as if both seeking that something and venting its absence with exasperation.

A multi-generational cast, featuring two performers from the original 2006 group, is a refreshing sight, especially when they sway their hips in a rare moment of unison. The ugly and dark is given as much stage time as the light, but when the latter comes, it feels lucidly joyous.

There is, however, quite drastic difference between roles. Though there are no leads as such, some performers are more verbal, while others are more reticent in personality but highly physical. We come to expect a specific energy from each performer, the closest we get to any continuity or narrative. That said, their absurd choices with one another expose them all as lost, despite their demure air and silky outfits.

The rain is enchanting. It falls as a shimmering curtain before which the performers continue unflinching. The finalé sees the cast untamed, leaping from the boulder’s height into dangerously shallow water. Movement from Act I is reborn beneath the showers at higher speed, and higher risk with the slippery surfaces beneath. Dancer’s pelt across the stage, splash into the stream and collapse, kick and fling their limbs. Drenched to their skin, they are disinhibited and dishevelled.

Bausch is famously known for saying: “I’m not so interested in how they move as what moves them.” What moves us can be brutal, our impulses inexplicable, but under Bausch’s moon, no shades of the human condition are concealed. Vollmond, at the knifes edges, captures the danger that exists in feeling deeply, and the liberation in existing authentically.