Tanztraume

Pina Bausch was a celebrated and innovative choreographer who became one of the leading figures of modern dance in Germany. Bausch said she believed a piece would change when performed by different dancers even with the same choreography, and as if to demonstrate this, several years after staging her 1978 ballet "Kontaktof" (aka "Contact Zone") with a cast of senior citizens, she took the casting in the other direction and employed forty youngsters between fourteen and eighteen years of age, mostly amateurs recruited from schools in Wuppertal. Over the course of a year, Bausch and her young dancers would meet once a week and work on the rudiments of the piece; filmmakers Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann were on hand for the weeks of rehearsal, and in the documentary TANZTRAUME: JUGENDLICHE TANZEN "KONTAKTHOF" VON PINA BAUSCH (aka DANCING DREAMS: TEENAGERS PERFORM "KONTAKTHOF" BY PINA BAUSCH) they captured the interaction between the teenagers and Bausch as well as the growth of the young people as they became more comfortable with the material and confident in their abilities on stage. DANCING DREAMS also unwittingly documented one of Pina Bausch's last major projects; she succumbed to cancer on June 9, 2009.