Pina Bausch and The Wuppertal Dance Theater: the Aesthetics of Repetition and Transformation
Ciane Fernances, Peter Lang, New York, 2001 - 146 pages and 9 photos

PHOTO from original book, in Portuguese edition: Wuppertal Dança-Teatro em 1980 - Ein Stück von Pina Bausch, by Gert Weigelt

This book embarks on an interdisciplinary study of dance theater, one that provides a deeper insight into contemporary performing arts. The author combines Laban Movement Analysis and the writings of Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault to investigate repetition in the works and creative process of Pina Bausch (b.1940), considered to be one of the most important choreographers of the twentieth century. This book examines repetition in Bausch's pieces as both method and subject, exploring its power in the metamorphosis of meaning. Repetition is used to subvert its own process of domination over the body, at aesthetic, cognitive and social levels. The body simultaneously becomes natural and linguistic, experiential and automatic, personal and social, constantly repeating and transforming the history of its domination.

"Ciane Fernandes provides the reader with a rich and comprehensive introduction to the work of Pina Bausch. Above all, her concise and well-delineated analysis addressing psychological and sociological aspects, opens my eyes as a choreographer and dancer to a broader understanding of Bausch's creative process and choreographies."
FRANK HAENDELER, Choreographer and Dancer, originally from Wuppertal.

"Due to her experience as both performer and academic, Fernandes is able to devote herself equally to both worlds: the emotionality of Bausch's nonverbal world of images, and the theoretical verbal world provided here by Lacan, Foucault, and Susanne K. Langer. Through a highly analytical discourse, Fernandes succeeds in keeping sensibility, respect, honesty, and humility toward the world of movement and images. The author becomes herself a mediator between dance and theory, movement and words, aesthetics and analysis. The descriptions/explorations of scenes taken from different pieces of Bausch provide the reader, who maybe not has seen one of her pieces, with many possibilities to experience the artistic variety of the Wuppertaler Tanztheater."
Excerpt from the Preface by SUSANNE SCHLICHER; Dramaturg;
Coordinator of Department of Theater Directing, University of Hamburg;
Author of TanzTheater. Traditionen und Freiheiten (1987).