How do You want to be remembered…?

… on the occasion of the film review of „ROMANCE“ by Samantha Shay, which will be shown at the moovy-festival in Cologne on 17 March.

a short commentary by Klaus Dilger

The fiftieth season of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch has long since reached its midpoint.This would actually have been an occasion for a Wuppertal F(eier)euer work about the internationally celebrated dance theatre icon and her dance theatre.

Instead:There are just four performances of „VIKTOR“ left on the Wuppertal programme in June and two guest performances of Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker’s „Exit Above After the Tempest“ in April, which in good old tradition could be added to the celebrations.

In Paris, the faces that have shaped dance theatre for many years may (or must) say the sentence eleven more times in „Sweet Mambo“ with which Pina Bausch wanted to give „her pearls“ a „memorial“ (or rather: remember?): „Don’t forget, my name is…“.

But perhaps they should rather say: „Don’t forget, my name is PINA BAUSCH!“ if they dare to make this small change to the text, also to make themselves realise once again that quality and authenticity play the decisive role when it comes to memorability, or else forgetting.

A question that also arises again and again with every performance of „Café Müller“, which has mutated into „Club Amour“, with changing casts, and with which the new artistic director of the Tanztheater, Boris Charmatz, recalls his sentence from the 50th season press conference: „… we are slowly blowing out the candles!“(perhaps just unfortunate wording?)

We would probably all like these formative dancers to be remembered with dignity, and not just with the work of Pina Bausch.

There is cause for concern, not least because the aforementioned monument could be nothing more than a quarry, from which Samatha Shay makes ample use of quotations in her film „Romance“.

Our critic Harff-Peter Schönherr, who also writes for the renowned „taz“ newspaper, saw and discussed the film.

HERE you will find the review

Announcement of the moovy Festival Cologne:
ROMANCE

Germany 2023 | 38 minutes

Director: Samantha Shay

Afterwards:

Talk with Samantha Shay

On a Saturday morning, a group of women in a lecture theatre learn to be romantic. Based on Miranda July’s short story „It was Romance“, the film creates an illuminating encounter between the works of July and Pina Bausch. The result of filmmaker Samantha Shay’s Fulbright Fellowship at Tanztheater Wuppertal and in collaboration with one of the company’s youngest and first transgender dancers, „Romance“ also explores how Naomi Brito’s transition was inspired by her encounter with the female roles in Pina Bausch’s repertoire. Shot on 16mm film in Pina Bausch’s iconic and ageing Lichtburg rehearsal studio, this piece walks the same line between fiction and reality, dance and documentary as Bausch’s deeply cathartic and often autobiographical work. „Romance“ is a fruitful dialogue between generations, between past, present and future, which shows through a new and powerful encounter that the power of an ageing legacy never ends.