A last filmed legacy of the great Pina Bausch shows her at work while she was still alive: Tanzträume: Jugendliche tanzen Kontakthof von Pina Bausch is based on Pina’s reprised masterpiece Kontakthof (Contact Zone) from 1978, this time danced by teenagers with no previous training in ballet or modern dance. The documentary by Anne Linsel and her camera man Rainer Hoffmann opened last March in Germany, after receiving enthusiastic reactions and rave reviews at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. The Yerba Buena Center of the Arts in San Francisco proudly offered a small series of older, well-known films on Pina Bausch in May, with the US premiere of Tanzträume as its peek.
Read the article and see an excerpt from the film at http://www.scene4.com/0710/renatestendhal0710.html
Here’s my own small anniversary: 50 times Gertie, many more quotes! Inspired by the sisterhood of She Writes, in Oct. 2009, I started sharing my musings about my first Muse — my passion (and sometimes exasperation) for Stein. 50 is a good moment to take a little loop backward and solve one of her mysteries… In post # 2, I had already alluded to Blood on the Dining-Room Floor: A Murder Mystery . Now it’s time to dive in.
In this famous photograph, Gertrude Stein sits with her massive back turned to the world, at her desk in Bilignin, in the southeast of France, writing about being unable to write. She reports what is happening in and around the deceptively dreamy little village while “it” — the writing — is “not happening.” Read the rest of this entry »