Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch review – a new era begins with energy and laughter

There’s a palpable sense of curiosity at Wuppertal as the lights dim for the premiere of the Bausch company’s latest show. The nine dancers who enter the stage are instantly recognisable, some of them veteran company members. But in contrast to the elaborate sets and elegant evening wear in which they’re usually seen, most of the cast are dressed in casual trainers and sweats, and the stage is stripped to a functional starkness.

This premiere is the start of a new era for the company: six years after the death of their founder, they’re finally opening up the repertory to outside choreographers. There are three new commissions in this programme, all by strikingly different dance makers.

The arrestingly pared-back opener is by British independent Theo Clinkard. Somewhat Still When Seen from Above is a group portrait in dance, and it’s clear that Clinkard knows what treasures he has in performers who can deliver a world of vivid personality through the smallest look or gesture.

At times the choreography feels like a low-level conversation – built out of small angles, eddies of rhythm and fluid impulses that pass between dancers. Sometimes the dynamic builds to a more dramatic rhetoric; eye contact becomes more urgent, bodies stretch and harden; while other sections are coloured by their music – a communal boogie to Booker T and the MGs, and a male solo that rises and falls to the melodic line of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending.

The dancers perform with a radiant precision, but it is in the transcendent thread of the Vaughan Williams solo that Clinkard encapsulates the double dynamic of his choreography, drawing us into the intimacy of the dancers’ interactions, but also imposing a distance, as if observing from a bird’s-eye view. Sitting in the packed theatre, I doubt I was the only one to imagine the spirit of Bausch was observing them, too.

Nor was I the only one to be startled into laughter by the wonderful unlikeliness of the second work, The Lighters’ Dancehall Polyphony – which sees its 11 dancers voguing, pirouetting and rapping through the wildly disparate enthusiasms of choreographers Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud. Within this romp of a work is a camp ballet solo for a man in a powder-blue ruff; Scott Jennings rapping a poem by Kate Tempest; and some tough, classy and funny hip-hop diva routines. As it veers chaotically between club and classical influences, there are even sections in which the dancers form a choir to singOrlando Gibbons’s choral music. It’s a work of astounding, crazed energy, and the fun the dancers are clearly having makes it an exhilarating watch.

Interestingly, the piece that makes the least impact is the one that pays most recognisable homage to Bausch. Tim Etchells’ In Terms of Time is located within a familiar Tanztheater space of absurdist ritual and truncated communication. The dancers careen round the stage carrying stacks of plastic glasses that cascade violently over the floor; they blow up balloons, hide behind potted plants, talk to the audience. It’s far from being a Bausch copy, and has a robust, contemporary energy of its own. But the company already have the original Bausch repertory to cherish; this new programme confirms that if they’re to have a distinctive post-Bausch future, they’re right to cast their net wide.