Almost 20 years ago, the influential German choreographer Pina Bausch premiered Vollmond – meaning full moon or high tide – one of the last works to be completed before she died in 2009. It’s a beautiful bold work, but rather lighter and more accessible than many of her signature pieces.
The work opens to a bare stage featuring a giant black boulder. In one of those tricks of space and light, you don’t appreciate just how big it is until the dancers begin to climb on it and suddenly they seem diminished by its size. As the show progresses, we realise there’s also an elaborate water feature on stage. Bausch worked with one of her favourite designers and collaborators Peter Pabst to create this stark and startling set. From springtime showers to full-on floods, the water is an impressive part of the action.
It is indeed a case of ‘water, water everywhere…’ as it rains down from above, is splashed in the puddles, thrown from glasses and buckets, and even spurts, fountain-like from the dancers’ mouths. There is something very visceral about these lithe dancers in their silky evening gowns, designed by Marion Cito, being totally drenched as they dance and swim across the stage.
The storyline is about our deepest human emotions and frailties. How do we behave in and out of love? And how much are we influenced by these elemental forces of nature, the cycles of the moon and the tides?
The excellent dancers of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch explore these themes in solos, duos and together, running, crashing, leaping and cavorting. There is an intense athleticism here that really excels with this intricate and demanding choreography. There’s also a little dialogue, opening with “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a stormy night”. Honouring Vollmond’s heritage, two of the dancers, Julie Anne Stanzak and Ditta Miranda Jasjfi, were in the original production all those years ago.
There’s humour too with some of the sequences clearly played for laughs and not always with great success. The carrot and the coat hanger and the clumsy attempts at undoing a bra just seem to undermine the intensity and sensuousness of the work. It feels more like a day at the gym than a night of love and lust.
Vollmond was undoubtedly exciting and exhilarating 20 years ago, and maybe even 12 years ago when it was last performed at Sadler’s Wells. And perhaps it was considered dangerous and provocative with its portrayals of coercive control in relationships between men and women.
Read: Musical review: Bat out of Hell, The Alexandra, Birmingham
All the elements are here, and the dancing is divine, but it just feels a little passé today.
Vollmond
Sadler’s Wells
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Boris Charmatz
Choreographer: Pina Bausch
Set Design: Peter Pabst
Costume Design: Marion Cito
Collaboration: Marion Cito, Daphnis Kokkinos, Robert Sturm
Rehearsal Directors 2025: Daphnis Kokkinos, Robert Sturm
Dancers: Edd Arnold, Dean Biosca, Emily Castelli, Maria Giovanna Delle Donne, Taylor Drury, Samuel Famechon, Ditta Miranda Jasjifi, Reginald Lefebvre, Alexander Lopez Guerra, Nicholas Losada, Julie Anne Stanzak, Christopher Tandy, Tsai-Wei Tien, Tsai-Chin Yu
Vollmond will be performed until 23 February 2025.
