There have been a few people I have seen in my life who have been beautiful. They each have been beautiful because they manifested compassionate souls beyond anything else. In their own way, they each have also been a poet. Archie Ammons was a poet who wrote on paper and sometimes also painted, Marianne Weber was an actress, and Pina Bausch was a choreographer who started the dancetheater, and who choreographed her dancetheatre pieces.

Born in Solingen, Germany, on July 27, 1940, Pina Bausch began her formal dance training at the Folkwang School in Essen in 1955 with teacher and choreographer Kurt Jooss (1901-1979). Though an unconventional start (most dance schools at the time were still rooted in classical ballet), Bausch’s three years of training with Jooss, a teacher

Born in Solingen, Germany, on July 27, 1940, Pina Bausch began her formal dance training at the Folkwang School in Essen in 1955 with teacher and choreographer Kurt Jooss (1901-1979). Though an unconventional start (most dance schools at the time were still rooted in classical ballet), Bausch’s three years of training with Jooss, a teacher and choreographer known primarily for his initiating and creating modern dance in Europe as well as with being a pioneer of the Ausdrucktanz or German expressionistic dance, gave Bausch a substantial training, vocabulary, background and inspiration for what she was to call Tanztheater.

Upon completing her three years of training with Jooss, with a DAAD grant she traveled to the United States on a DAAD grant to study dance at Julliard for two years, 1960-62. Upon an invitation from Jooss, she returned to Germany in 1962 to join Jooss’ newly found Folkwang Ballet Company. Six years later, Bausch choreographed her first piece, Fragment,s in 1968 with the Folkwang Ballet Company dancers. In 1969, following her mentor, Bausch became the Artistic Director of the Folkwang Ballet Company. In 1973 she was appointed the Artistic Director of the Wuppertal Tanztheater, where she remained till her death in 2009: auditioning, training and bringing together as an ensemble, dancers from all over the world to create dancetheatre pieces. In addition, while Artistic Director of the Wuppertal Tanztheater, Bausch also served as the Artistic Director of Folkwang Tanzstudio and from 1983-1989 served as the head of the dance department of Folkwang Hochschule in Essen.

Of her most notable and influential pieces include: Wind Von West (Wind From The West), Der Zweite Frühling (The Second Spring) and Le Sacre Du Printemps (The Rite Of Spring) – All three with the music by Igor Strawinsky in 1975; Die Sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins) with The Seven Deadly Sins of The Petty Bourgeoisie and Don't Be Afraid with music by Kurt Weill and text by Bertolt Brecht in 1976; Café Muller and Kontakthof in 1978; Arien in 1979; Ein Stück Von Pina Bausch in 1980; Walzer and Nelken  (Carnations) in 1982; Two Cigarettes In The Dark in 1985; Palermo Palermo in 1989, Nur Du (Only You) in 1996; Der Fensterputzer (The Window Washer) in 1997; Masurca Fogo in 1998; Für Die Kinder Von Gestern, Heute Und Morgen (For the Children of  Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow)  in 2002; Nefes  in 2002; Ten Chi in 2004 and Rough Cut in 2005. In addition to her Wuppertal Tanztheater pieces, in 1998 under the musical direction of Pierre Boulez, she directed the opera Herzog Bluebeard's Castle by Béla Bartók for the Festival International d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence directed the film The Plaint of the Empress in 1990, and played the role of La Principessa Lherimia in Federico Fellini’s 1982 film E la nave va (And the Ship Sails On).

It is almost impossible to use language - written and spoken words - to talk about other forms of expression and arts which reflect and mirror life in their own form and language. The arts - all stemming from poetry or the ancient Greek word poetics - each have their unique forms of expression. With Pina Bausch, the mode of “talking about” or “writing about” her works and/or herself, becomes infinitely more difficult as she comes very close to creating what Wagner coined as the Gesamtkunstwerk - or the “total work of art” - but with the great advantage of being modest, down to earth and somewhat “simple” in a good way: a simplicity which used excellent choices of diverse international music, simple but bold sets, elegant costumes and incredibly well trained ensemble of dancers from all over the world in order to communicate and relate to her audiences the current human condition and predicament between people, nations and cultures.

Bausch signature was telling and showing profound human matters in a simple honest manner which would touch and challenge her audiences’ hearts, souls and minds; with a cast of 2-3 actor-dancers or her entire Wuppertal ensemble. With Bausch, as with all great artists, “form” had been mastered so as to touch upon and communicate profound, and sometimes affect matters of the human heart and soul: love, despair, war and peace, passion and pain or passion and laughter, childhood or young age, and discovery of the self. Her stage reveals and shows what she and her ensemble have discovered about themselves and about human beings through a perfect selection of music, costumes, set and dancetheatre choreography: her pieces could not get anymore honest and truthful in their depiction of human beings and their individual and interpersonal bonds, nor could they get too emotional either: they were as perfect as perfection could be on a theatre stage. With all this praise said, an additional truth about Bausch was that, unlike most great artists, she had the blessing and quality of having humanity and made no reservation to show and share it with her audience and the world in complete humility. The final truth about Pina Bausch was that like the rest of us, she was not immortal: she passed away on 30th of June, 2009 in Wuppertal, Germany, five days after being diagnosed for cancer. 

The first Bausch production I saw was Palermo, Palermo in Paris in 1991. It was the first time that a theatrical production made me humble. Somehow Bausch had managed to touch and strike every fiber, nerve, thought and emotion that my body had as a human being. The thought and memory of being involved in the theatre for over 30 years, and having Bausch’s stage bring me to weep as a human being affirms that for the first time the miracle of the spirit being alive and active between the stage and the audience could be a reality. Since, I have rarely been able to find the same spiritual experience on few other stages. Bausch was exceptional. She was not only exceptional as an artist, but she also was exceptional as a person who had humanity written all over her: looking at her as a human being, one could easily find and see a person who had seen and internalized a great scope of human stories, conditions and emotions: one cannot create out of emptiness and void and Bausch certainly did not do that. She gave the world a great series of immense gifts as she herself had experienced and seen a lot of humanity and human stories at work before her. The richness, fullness and humanity of her work is, and will be, the guarantee of her legacy for future generations to come. In an interview held at BAM in 2004, in conjunction with her production of For the Children of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow Bausch pointed out: “I always try to speak about all of us, about what we feel, about our same language, about our wishes, our hope, our desires, our fears, about love, about, yes, being human - about how beautiful each personis, and about how fragile each person is. And I think all these together is what I have to say.”

Bausch was married to Dutch-born Rolf Borzik, a set and costume designer who died of leukemia in 1980. In 1981 Ronald Kay became her life-long companion and was the father of her son, Rolf. Among the honors awarded to Bausch are the UK's Laurence Olivier Award and Japan's Kyoto Prize, while in 2008 the city of Frankfurt-am-Main awarded her its prestigious Goethe Prize. Despite her sudden death, Bausch’s legacy will remain in years and ages to come: Thank-God!