Sweet Mambo: Pina Bausch more sensual than ever

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Paris. Théâtre de la Ville Sarah Bernhardt. 23-IV-24. Tanztheater Wuppertal + pitch: Sweet Mambo. Direction & choreography: Pina Bausch. Set design & video: Peter Pabst. Costumes: Marion Cito. Musical collaboration: Matthias Burkert, Andreas Eisenschneider. Collaboration: Marion Cito, Thusnelda Mercy, Robert Sturm. Decor assistant: Gerburg Stoffel. Costume assistant: Svea Kossak. Artistic direction of the recreation: Alan Lucien Øyen. Rehearsal direction: Azusa Seyama, Robert Sturm. Music / Barry Adamson, Trygve Seim, Gustavo Santaolalla, Hope Sandoval, Portishead, Lucky Pierre Hazmat Modine, Jun Miyake, Mecca Bodega, Cluster & Eno, Lisa Ekdahl, Mari Boine, René Aubry, Mina Agossi, Ian Simmonds.
With Andrey Berezin, Naomi Brito, Daphnis Kokkinos, Alexander López Guerra / Reginald Lefebvrel, Nazareth Panadero, Héléna Pikon, Julie Shanahan, Julie Anne Stanzak, Aida Vainieri (guests)
Artistic direction Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + grounds: Boris Charmatz
The extract from the film Der Blaufuchs (The Blue Fox), 1938, UFA / Director: Viktor Tourjansky Screenplay: Dr. KB Külb, was kindly made available by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Stiftung, Wiesbaden.
Premiered on May 30, 2008 at the Schauspielhaus / Wuppertal. Representation rights: Verlag der Autoren, representing Pina Bausch Foundation.

The Tanztheater Wuppertal returns to the Théâtre de la Ville – Sarah Bernardt with the resumption of Sweet Mambo, Pina Bausch’s penultimate show, created in 2008, before her death less than a year later. An ode to the sensuality of women.

The alchemy of a Pina Bausch show lies first and foremost in its casting. That of Sweet Mambo, the penultimate show by Pina Bausch and the last created during her lifetime, and now performed by the Tanztheater Wuppertal, is exemplary in more than one way. The artistic direction of this revival has been entrusted to Alan Lucien Øyen, an independent Norwegian choreographer who has already created two pieces for the Paris Opera Ballet and one for the Tanztheater Wuppertal. A rich idea from Boris Charmatz, now director of the Wuppertal company.

The cast mixes historical performers of the play, artists now invited by the company, such as Nazareth Panaredo, Julie Shanahan, Julie Anne Stanzak and Méléna Pikon, all fantastic! And new artists who revive the piece by infusing it with confusion, ambiguity and sensuality. This is the case of Naomi Brito, a superb trans artist who opens the show with a breathtaking solo. With her atypical body and her more than fluid gender, Naomi Brito offers another form of femininity but thus renews the spirit of Pina. It’s really Pina, more than ever, but differently. A Pina from the year 2024, even better than the one from the end of the 2000s.

It is a joy to see the great performers again: Julie Shanahan, heartbreaking and unleashed, Nazareth Panaredo, as usual extremely funny and caustic, and the wonderful Julie Anne Stanzak in very powerful dreamlike and symbolic scenes. The images of these women, always in silk dresses cut on the bias, remain in the retina for a long time. The head resting on a pillow placed in the air, the body pivoting in vaporous curtains, the water spilled several times on the body… the gestures become grandiloquent and dramatic, always poignant.

This is music by René Aubry, taken from his album Shelterswhich gives its title to Sweet Mambo. A distant echo of the rhythm of the mambo, a famous Latin dance, from which Pina Bausch barely draws inspiration. But no matter, maturity suits this piece which, upon its creation, had a mixed response, including in our pages. Perhaps we first had to mourn the choreographer to better appreciate her rebellious and melancholic spirit, her homage to the beauty and singularity of women – all women.