The Theatre of Pina Bausch

Extract

Two jokes; a dream. “A man came to the circus manager and asked him if he needed a bird imitator. ‘No,’ answered the circus manager. Then the man flew away through the window.” This and a second joke are told twice—in the first and in the last part—in Pina Bausch's Arien (Aries). “Berlin. A man asks a cabdriver: ‘Can you tell me how I can get to the Philharmonic?’ The cabdriver answers. ‘Sure, man, that's very easy: practice, practice, practice.’” “They practiced and could fly for two hours,” someone noted after an Arien performance. In Pina Bausch's Macbeth paraphrase there is the same dream. “How will you live?” Lady Macduff asks her son. “As the birds do.” It is cited twice.