The Complaint of an Empress

The Ballet de l'Opera National de Paris mounted this production of the late Pina Bausch's dance-opera Orpheus und Eurydike, which Bausch had adapted from composer Christoph Willibald-Gluck and Ranieri de' Calzabigi's 1762 opera Orfeo ed Euridice. As the title suggests, it takes its basic narrative from the myth of Orpheus, and his courageous but ill-fated attempt to rescue his lover Eurydice (also known as Eurydike) from the jaws of the underworld. This particular production finds Yann Bridard dancing as Orpheus and Marie-Agnès Gillot dancing as Eurydike , with mezzo-soprano Maria-Riccarda Wesseling accompanying Bridard and soprano Julia Kleiter accompanying Wesseling. Pina Bausch did the choreography and stage direction, while Rolf Borzik designed the sets, costumes and lighting. The Balthasar-Neumann Ensemble & Choir, under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock, lend musical accompaniment.

Two of Pina Bausch’s most famous works are rehearsed in Germany and Senegal, championing the choreographer’s legacy through a younger generation of dancers.

Two men share an odd friendship while they care for two women who are both in deep comas.

In 1914, a cruise ship sets sail from Naples to spread the ashes of beloved opera singer Edmea Tetua near Erimo, the isle of her birth. During the voyage, the eclectic array of passengers discovers a group of Serbian refugees aboard the vessel. Peace and camaraderie abound until the ship is descended upon by an Austrian flagship. The Serbians are forced to board it, but naturally they resist, igniting a skirmish that ends in destruction.

An exhilarating, essayistic documentary about the 1980 festival of experimental theatre in the French city of Nancy. Werner Schroeter's favourite of his own films.

In a castle whose floor is littered with dead leaves, a man compulsively plays a tape recorder. Surrounded by figures that haunt him, he listens, rewinds and listens again to the music of Bluebeard.

Pina Bausch’s iconic choreography to The Rite of Spring danced on the beach in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal. Filmed as the world descended into lockdown, this recording captures the last rehearsal of a specially assembled company of 38 dancers from 14 African countries, and documents a unique moment in their preparations for an international tour that would go on to be cancelled by COVID-19.

In many ways, "Kontakthof" could be seen as the sum of Pina Bausch's choreographies: the performance takes place at a single location. The high room is completely empty and open to the public - like a showcase. The other three sides are furnished with long rows of chairs, like in a dance school. Men and women sit next to each other. Little by little they rise and all sorts of encounters ensue, some cautious and tentative, others wild and impetuous. Sometimes there is a single couple on the dance floor, sometimes the full cast of 30 dancers. Bausch created this piece with her ensemble in 1978. "Kontakthof" is one of four choreographies by Pina Bausch that the director Wim Wenders recorded in full for his film "Pina - Tanzt, tanzt, oder wir los sind" ("Pina - Dance, Dance, Otherwise We Are Lost").

Complete recording of Pina Bausch's piece Vollmond (Full Moon) by Wim Wenders.

While Pina Bausch was preparing her film The Plaint of the Empress in 1987, the French, British and German co-producers were waiting for a script. No script: no film. That is how the film industry saw things.The discussions dragged on but eventually the TV stations accepted the idea of shooting the film without a script. Someone had the idea of making a "test film" showing what the results of working in Pina Bausch's way could be. That's how this film was born - a documentary on the rehearsals for AHNEN, a piece she was developing at the time. For twenty five years the film stayed in the archives; today it emerges as an extraordinary document. This is how Pina Bausch and her company worked. This is how this work was created, that touched so many people continous to do so today.

...Dancing to the border of exhaustion. Dressed in little, the black earth sticks to their skin. Yes, to the point where it hurts. A document of early Pina Bausch, an authentic recording of one of the most outstanding choreographies of the 20th century.

As debut of the film series, video footage of the piece Palermo Palermo, which was taken shortly after the piece’s premiere in 1989, has been digitally restored. Thanks to a grant from the Arts Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States, the material produced by Metrovision was acquired from the publishing house L’Arche Éditeur and has now been cut into a film version by the Pina Bausch Foundation.

Walzer is an excerpt taken from a work by the same name. Pina Bausch premiered it in the summer of 1982 at the Carré Theatre in Amsterdam and filmed it in the autumn of the same year in the theatre of Wuppertal. When in 1986 the German radio station Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Hamburg asked for a recording, Pina Bausch selected and edited the material into the film Walzer.