 Everybody back here to the Martin E. Segal Theater Center at the Graduate Center CUNY of the City University in New York and the middle of Manhattan in Midtown, close to the New York public library where the lions also seem to have been sleeping on the steps of the library. And one has the feeling that they are also slowly looking around in the city that is awakening. And it's a beautiful summer day, very hot in parts of America's experiencing extreme heat. And in one way also, we do experience that because it's the time of Corona, it's one way is coming to an end. Still very open questions, what will happen? Will mutations of the virus stay with us? We hear these horrible news from India. We're actually going to do a 24-hour day dedicated to theater artists in India who are staying up days and nights to connect the people around the city with a few hospital beds that are available. It's incredibly heartbreaking what we hear from there. But still here and in Germany, France, in Italy, things are moving ahead. But it is now the time we have talked so much about in our last 160, 70 sessions, what is going to happen when this time is over? What have we learned about us? What will we do differently? And so many express that what was there was not perfect, it was not right. It actually needed to change, especially here in the US. And for our fellow artists from around the world, we have now talked to almost 200 people from 50 countries. So it is an important contribution from everyone we hear. But today, we have a special company with us, a very important company, one of the very few companies that left an imprint that changed when they performed. It's world of theater performance, dance, or dance theater was different. The idea that like the Berliners ensemble was the three, was the Mother Courage and Brecht Directed Change Theater. I was saying Grotowski Change Theater when you saw was a Peter Brug, Nuschkin, there was something different. So many great artists, Virginia Barba, who was here with us, things were different. And one of those companies who ate a bit from the apple of the tree of enlightenment is the great Pina Bausch Dance Theater Company. They are here with us. And we talked to so many artists, emerging artists, unknown, known. And today in that whole puzzle of this mosaic, we have with us two of the great, who won what could one say? Artists, warriors for theater, for dance, with us it is Bettina Wagner Bergelt and Elena Picant or Ellen, as she said, Pina called her once. So both of you, thank you so much. It's a big honor to have you with us and where are you and what time is it? Elena, maybe you, Elena, you can start. Thank you very much. I am in Rupert, I am in Germany. No, I am from Düsseldorf and it is still very clear here. It's 18, it's six o'clock in the evening. Yes, but it's still very, very clear weather. I mean, yeah, I am in Germany at home. Bettina, where are you? I'm presently in my home office. And I was in Wuppertal yesterday and I came back during the night because we had a general rehearsal yesterday evening. The weather's the same, it's only one hour away from Wuppertal, so it's the same situation. But it's getting darker, maybe we expect some rain. I'm not sure. What's the town you're in? It's Herford. How wonderful. So you live a little bit outside? No, that's the place where my family stays and I went there for this. Oh, you went there. So you all must have had so many Zoom talks in that home office of yours. Yes, home office everywhere. Everywhere, yeah. Wherever we were, we could do home office. That was home office, yeah. So what a time to run a dance theater company. So we can't wait to hear both of you, how you experienced this year, what it means more about your company, what your plans are for our listeners. Nobody now needs an introduction to Pina Bausch and her great work, her groundbreaking work. She was so beloved in New York City, she also had strong roots of coming from the Juilliard School here and being part of New York City Ballet and having a lifelong engagement, especially in BAM with the great Joe Malillo. I think there was a long-going collaboration. But let me introduce my two guests so we get a little bit more of an idea. Bettina Avagna-Bergelt is at the Dance Theater, Wuppertal Pina Bausch, this is the name of the company, since 2019. And before that, she was the deputy director of the Bavarian States Ballet for 15, 16 years. Before that, she was the head dramaturg. And so this is also something we can talk about, the idea of the dramaturgy for dance. And we talk about change, and we talk about new forms of engagement. This is something this company pioneered with Bettina. At the site, Raymond Hogo, of course, also is well-known for having had that engagement and it became a model, I think, worldwide to think differently about dramaturgy. And also what it means in dance, because traditionally, and especially in the US, dramaturgy is, you know, re-helping to someone rewrite the third act and do some PR outreach and, you know, and go out for a beer with the director or the actor or something goes wrong. But no, this is a very serious engagement. And they did that. She built up Bettina in Munich, an outstanding and really highly respected international repertoire of modern and avant-garde works. And she created campus, a Staatsballet, campus-state ballet, interdisciplinary outreach, outreach program for dance and ballet. So something also we could hear what her ideas are, what she thinks what theater is about and dance and dance theater where it all comes together. She created, that's what she was known for in the very beginning, the Munich Festival Dance, the internationalist dance festival. And she was, of course, its artistic director. So in the time in the 80s, when so many things changed and came up in Germany, she was part of that movement that brought change. Elena or Helena, Piquant or Elaine, as Pina Bausette began dancing professionally in 1975. She is truly an experienced artist who has seen a lot of the world stages, experienced the ups and downs and ways of, like as someone said, it's like water. You have little water running down the table. It goes in curves that never goes straight. So she has been with the company for such a long time and very few know the company better. So it's a big honor to have her with us. She started out dancing with Jacques Patavozzi in the company Le Mans. And in 1981, this is early Pina Bausette invited her to join the ensemble as a permanent member which can be compared when the queen takes out her sword and gives a title to a nobleman who then all of a sudden is at the court in the center of the universe. It's like a center of Versailles, is the king. So it's incredible. And she was part of the original cast of waltz or carnations on the mountains, a cry we hear, we heard cigarettes in the dark, but it goes on and on the children of yesterday, today and tomorrow, sweet mambo and bon voyage. So many, many works you can look that up. She also appeared in the Pina Bausette film The Complaint of the Empress and of course in Bim Vendor's film, significant film, a beloved film that also crossed a creative new audience, his film Pina. So thank you both for coming. It's a big honor and maybe give us an idea. And we start with Bettina who is also a rehearsal director for the company. Like we taking care of existing pieces like museums are in the wake, some of the paintings that you don't have to be in good condition but on the company they are live, they're dancers, exchange, theater is unique. It's every evening. Even if you have the same company, so it's quite a challenge. So Bettina and Elena, we really would like to hear from you. How did a company like yours experienced last year, the time of Corona? Elena, give us a little update. How did you also feel as an artist? So yeah, it was something we were not prepared, of course, stupid to say this, but it was really a shock for that. And so Bettina gave us a lot of chance actually as artists to try things. She gave us a lot of opportunities to try things. And it was for me a chance to begin to do something with Sidila Bishakawi, the choreographer in Belgium, on the album. So I began to work with him and then suddenly it was this Corona terrible things. So you were in Belgium rehearsing a new piece or taking care of it? Yes, I was. And then you've got an email, a call or what happened? Yeah, I was in Belgium two, three times already to begin a creation with him. He invite me as dancer. And I was very happy to work with him and to begin to work with him and to know him a bit more and then it was happening these things. We come back to, I come back to Rupert Tal and actually it was finished. It was just like that. And Bettina gave me also the possibility to work with Lucien Ais-Ian-Oyen who has made Bon Voyage Bob some years ago. And he wanted me for a creation in Paris Opera as a dancer also as participating dancer. And the same thing, I begin one week somehow two years and it was after a while I couldn't go back because it was finished, everything stopped. So for me it was a pity because I am now, I am not a young dancer and I am quite in ending for my career. And it was very beautiful what I could have expect or what I could have tried. And it was just like suspending and finish. The city of Rupert Tal said everything is closed, stay at home and... Yes, Bettina maybe can say much more about this how it's really happened because she's really... Bettina, maybe tell us. How was the moment for you? Well it was actually, it was a terrible moment. We had just begun a series of seven deadly sins by Peena because I concentrated, I decided very early to concentrate on restaging pieces of the 70s which hadn't been done for a long, long time, most of them and seven deadly sins was one of the important pieces of the 70s. We had just started to rehearse and then the corona was already like in the public discourse. And then in March, suddenly after the second performance, I think second or third performance, we had Ute Lemper from New York to sing the main part and we had to stop immediately and we got the information from the city government that we have to stop being together in the studio, to stop being together on stage, no spectator was allowed anymore in the theater. And of course nobody knew what that means. I mean it was like an emergency. And we said, okay, maybe for a week or two or three and nobody knew that it would really stay like one and a half year. I think we're now, we have 15 or 16 months now of the situation and it was a pity. We were supposed to go to Paris with this piece afterwards. It's with big orchestra, it's a breached piece, you know? It's a huge cast with way over 20 people on stage and singers, actors, a big orchestra. The Kurt Weill music and it was, yeah, it had to be canceled. And of course our partner in Paris, Claire Verlet from Teatro de la Ville, she was desperate because they had rented another theater. I think it was the Châtelet where we were supposed to perform it. And yeah, it all stopped suddenly and we were all confused of course. A lot of people were afraid because you had, you heard so many rumors, how dangerous this epidemic is. And so, yeah, that was the beginning. And then what we did was mainly to adapt to the situation step by step. And we decided very early, we have one colleague, she really like specialized in Corona during these 15, 16 months. She tried to get all the information and also in a, not only in a serious way but also in a reasonable way, you know, not panic, not overdue, not exaggerate but make sure we do certain steps and keep the company safe, keep it also quiet. They don't, we didn't want to make anybody get into panic because we have a lot of people who don't have their families with them. They live in a foreign country still for many, many years. Some of them are young, the others are older but they all have the special situations also at home. So we had to take care of all this and yeah, we adapted step by step. And as Helena said, at that time, we prepared a creation with Sidi Laby Chakawi and four other choreographers. They had all started to work. Helena was in the piece by Sidi Laby actually to talk about dramaturgy because you mentioned it before. I wanted it to be an encounter. It was the title also an encounter of five artists working with the tradition, also the body memory of Pina and somehow get all these dancers from this tradition to work in their style and they, the five people had a totally different style. And they were supposed to, for the first time also in their life work on one evening together, not 20 minutes each but to make a piece, create a piece together where lines were laid and little tracks from one to the other, about encountering the other. And that was the idea behind it. And Helena had just started, as she said before, to work with Sidi Laby Chakawi and then she had to come back and the second project that she wanted to do, which is also part of the company policy now that people get the chance to work with other artists we now have somebody who's working with Bob Wilson in the next season. And that's my, maybe a little, yeah, really a new step into a new politics that the company not only opens up to other countries as Pina did for a long, long time working with, in collaboration with other countries, other cities in the world. I also tried to support the dancers in making new experiences in meeting artists and working with them and get new ideas of how working processes can be and how they can participate and contribute to that with other artists because Pina's not there anymore. She's not there, incredible though. The train that of course was not easy to push on again after Pina was passing is then kind of running seven deadly sins, five choreographers one evening at the end, you have zero, you cannot show it, and that's incredible. Ellen and I have, you could give us a little idea, I mean, but Pina kind of hinted at it. We don't really know what is the company, how many dancers, do you have a theater, how many people work for it? Do you have rehearsals such as would you paint a little bit, how does the Pina Bausch Dance Theater Company look like? Yeah, actually we are like about 32 dancers and then there is also the technique and the bureau and everybody together, people working on stage. It's about like 70 people together, the crew. So there is some people who are a rehearsal director to help us through all the pieces from Pina to the stages pieces. Of course, there is about like 42 or 40 more, I don't know exactly, I don't remember really, but it's a lot of pieces from Pina and we doesn't have the stage everything until now, but we have quite a stage song and so it is a collaborating work. We cannot work separately. And I think because people are, some people are still in this company, some people who are working with Pina some long times and some new dancer. And so it's necessary to pass the role, to give role, to recruit the dancer, to give them this beautiful work from Pina and for that, we need also the memories from the dancers and for giving the roles and so it's very much a collaborating work. And you have a theater of your own, a theater or rehearsal stages or you're a guest, how does it work? Maybe Pina, you do this. No, we have the opera house. Actually, there were two houses, the Schauspielhaus and the opera house where Pina both created- In Wuppertal, right? In Wuppertal, yeah. The existing city's theater. Yes, she always stayed in Wuppertal. She was offered this job as an artistic director and choreographer-in-chief in 73 in Wuppertal by a very, very courageous, intendant director and she stayed there. She had offers to come to Paris. She had offers to go to other cities. They wanted to subsidize her and she never said yes. She wanted to stay in Wuppertal because she loved the city because of its special flair, its special atmosphere because it had this mixture of a very, very wealthy industrial past of producing a bit more. Clothing? Clothing, right. And they had special techniques and everything. It was the most wealthy city in Germany, actually around the 19th to the 20th century. So she loved this city because she always said it's an everyday city. It's not something fancy. It's not elegant. It's people who look tired sometimes. There are people who look sad. There are people that are poor. It's a good mixture. And she loved this atmosphere and obviously it inspired her very much for her pieces also. And she had an equivalent on the other side because she had all these collaborations with Japan, with Chile, with Brazil and with Hungary and with very, very many countries and cities in the world, Portugal and Lisbon. And so it was a balance, I think, of both staying there and being very stable. And on the other hand, go out into the world and exchange ideas and working experience with other people. Do research on how do people live? What makes, what is different from us? What is the same? Where are we, do we resemble each other? And where are gaps that we don't know about even? And maybe totally different political situations also. So this was her starting point in a way. And this is still what the company, where the company is. And as Helena said, we have half of the company who work with Pina and the other half who are new dancers and they're getting more and more, of course. And it's a beautiful task that Helena and her generation have to, on the one hand, pass their roles over to the young generation and work with them on the roles. And on the other hand, also stage the pieces, the more than 44 pieces that she created. And that's a wonderful work, I think. And apart from that, we are now also concentrating on a lot of other things like opening the company to the region, to festivals in the region. We try to do collaborations. And I'm also very much interested in supporting young artists and give them the chance because Pina has such a name, to work with Tanzdiata. It's like twice a week that I get a question, an email, can I work with you? Can I have a scholarship? Can I stay with the company? Can I dance with the company? Or have an apprenticeship and stuff like that. And I try very much to be positive and try to give all these people a chance, these artists, young artists and students and scientists and historians. And this is very exciting in a way. And I think this is also something new after the 10 years, after Pina's death. There was no one to take care of things like that. And as I'm a drama talk and I've done a lot of things in Munich already, I think it's also good for the company to have this exchange. Right now we have somebody from New York. She has a full bright scholarship and she will start next season to work with us. She's called Samantha Shays. She's a young filmmaker. And we'll be with us with you. It's incredible. I mean, I have met dancers when we talk about theater and when they talk about Pina Vosch and the Wuppertalitanztheater and the conditions, they actually have tears in their eyes. And they say, I wish so much. We had anything like this and they are so touched by the work but also by the conditions. So you're a kind of a model. You invented almost the company field in theater. Wuppertalitanztheater, yeah, an interesting city. It would be in the US if someone says, well, yes, I'd rather stay, I don't know, in Philadelphia, I don't want to be in Los Angeles or in New York. I think George Taburi also for a while was there. So there, it's quite an interesting place for a while. It was, it just showed, it depends on people, as you said, you know, that intendant who brought them over and that she said, perhaps her work can flourish more there than in the big, easy metropolis. What many people talk in the Segal talks about that perhaps to develop a unique style, it's better to be outside, the very big noise and... It is not a Sunday city. I don't know how to say it in English really good but Pina was saying it's not a city for Sunday. It's really a working city like Bettina says. And the person, the name from this person who invite Pina was Arno Gustenow, this intendant. You have seen her, of course, in the Wolfgang Schull in Essen. And she was already making some creation and some solos and he was really giving to this young artist the possibility to be the director from the ballet from Wuppertal at this time. And of course, for the time, it was very much... There were a lot of people left, of course, when Pina came and some of them, they stay and they stay very, very long time. Like Jan-Mina Haig, for example, really, really a very big important companion from work with Pina, incredible actor and dancer. If we could ask, what does Pina Bausch's work mean for you? What was the essence of it? What made you stay with it? What was it all about? Oh, it's a big question. And for me, Pina, for me, she doesn't give to the people what they want to have. Maybe I'll make it a short way now. But she gives them the possibility to accept what they feel. Because on stage, I have an example, for example, incarnations, we have Dominique Mercier asking to the people, to the public, what do you want to see? What do you want to see more? Do you want to see Pia? What do you want to see? I can do it, I can do it. And actually, there are some people who maybe would like to see, but maybe other people they really feel, oh, I'm always asked like that also to show things which I'm not. And maybe, I mean, of course, every people has their own understanding from the piece of Pina, because she never say what it is, she never explain it. And maybe someone else has another understanding from that. But for me, she's really a person who gives the possibility to the person, to the public to accept what he feels on to see someone on stage. And it's not a question from acting. It's really something from giving. It's a theater for people. It's not a theater or the dance theater for us. It's a theater or the dance theater for people. It's from to go out and to have a sharing things. And this is for me very, very important because I begin very late to dance and this was what I feel of her. She give me the possibility to be myself. She give me the possibility to discover who I am. She give me the possibility to go over things which I maybe never thought I can do or never really feel and not to be ashamed to feel things, to say things with my body or I have a lot of things together coming in my head. But it's really a real, you can feel you are the right to feel what you feel. You are the right to do, to share with the public. And I think it's a kind of post-identification. For example, if I dance because I'm not interesting just to dance for dancing, me personally, I want to share, I want to share. And I want to be the person who are sitting in the public. I want to be that this person is me in a way. You know what I mean? We can exchange our kind of identification. And I really feel it's important to have this. This person sitting there, maybe she has a lot of crying inside of her or something like this. And I want to be this person for her. I want to, because we are same in a lot of way. And that's why it was incredible to do. And so it's so many different country where we see human people are not so much different in a lot of feeling. Of course, you have something stopping you because of your education. But even in Japan, in Japan, people were very touched. And for example, last time we have done Kuntansmitmere, come dance with me. People were crying. Japanese people, you would sing, they never cried in front of us in public. So how was it for you as a company member of that special ensemble that Pina created over time that both you, Bettina and Carrie on that time of Corona, did that give you some tools to handle that? How was the mood in the company? How did you deal all with it? Well, we tried actually to communicate as much as possible. I invented a format that I called Art Meetings, which just developed because we had our company meetings. And then we thought, oh, we can do it by Zoom. We can talk with each other. And we can maybe talk about topics and subjects that move us, that we think about, that are important to us. So we met, I don't know, once a month and we had these meetings. We had a coach leading us through these discussions because some of them were difficult, emotionally difficult. Like we talked also about racism and- So you had a theme in the, like you said, we do an art meeting. Everybody, every 70 of them, also technicians, everybody can share or- Yeah, sometimes with the technicians, sometimes just the dancers. Give us a theme, what was the theme? Well, like what Helena described in the beginning, how do we, I mean, my main task as a director was to take care of the heritage of Pina Bausch. It seems to be a simple sentence, but actually it's a big, big, big task. And it's a lot of responsibility. So we started to talk about with the rehearsal directors, but also with the dancers about their experience. Because Pina always wanted, as Helena just described very, very beautifully, the dancers to be themselves. She didn't want actors. She didn't want to have dancers. She really cut off this history of dance being a representation. So she wanted the people to see people on stage, to see themselves, which is not possible when you watch a classical ballet. Because the people are virtuosos and they are specialists. And you see, you can never do this, these periods yourself. But when you watch Pina, you see normal people on stage. They were not supposed to act, to pretend, to perform. She wanted them to be themselves and to deal with their own experience in life. And of course, to pass that to a younger generation, how will you do that? It's very difficult to do it because they have to learn it as a role, of course. And then you have to make another step to find out how much of the experience that is part of this role, of this part. She always called it places. She never said roles of this place in a piece. And how much can this young dancer contribute to this scene, to this situation? Because if it's just repetition, if they just learn it by heart and speak like a puppet, it's not interesting anymore. And it loses the impact. It loses the excitement. It loses the authenticity also of the pieces. So we talked about that. How do you feel? And there were dancers who said, well, we think it's not such a creative process anymore. And we would love to have a process that is where we can give our creativity into these roles, into these places that we learned more than before. So we discussed all these possibilities. And one consequence of this was actually that I invited a young artist from Tel Aviv, Sam Agal, Israeli choreographer. And next season, we have Alan Oyen to help us to be there with us in the staging process and to find a new approach together with the dancers and the rehearsal directors and try out if there is a way to give the dancers a possibility or more possibilities, more ways to really add their own experience in life, which might be different from the ones of Helena and her generation. So this was a very interesting process that we had. And that was part of these art meetings and a lot of other things. And then of course we tried to, we made a concept. We had this so-called hygienic concepts that we had to make. And we tried to stay in the studio even if it was just one rehearsal director and one dancer. And we made it like five sessions a day of one and a half hours. We had to get fresh air after 20 minutes, open all the doors. And it was a big organizational challenge also to make it in a way. And hope and thank God we had not one infection till now. So we stayed all the way through the last half of the season. And this whole season without one infection in the company or among the technicians or the colleagues in the offices in the direction and atmosphere. How symbolically important that is to keep something or I think New York City Ballet shut down. They didn't use their spaces, their resources. And so did this time, a question about both of you, is your company different after this time of Corona? Did it speed up perhaps the thoughts I just, or do you think actually we always thought and this was a reconformation of our development or reinventing the company. But was this time a time of change? Will it be or do you feel it was a pause? It was a time of thoughtfulness, I think. We talked much more because as Helena mentioned before, Pina never talked about anything. She worked on her pieces. She would never explain anything. She would never talk about the pieces, about the situation. She just had everybody come and work for hours and hours and hours. So I think this was quite new to exchange ideas and thoughts and talk about your situation and to also talk about your anxieties in this Corona situation. I tried to support the people and let them really ask us questions and say, I'm sorry, I don't wanna go to the studio tomorrow because I'm afraid I get infected and what can I do? And so we really try to be honest and open. And I don't know how much this is mirrored from the company, but for me, I try to give them the opportunity to be open and to let us know what fears they had. And we always try to exchange also, is it good what we do? Do you feel safe? Do you feel we really take care of you? Or is there anything we could do on top of that? And that was a lot of our responsibility. My colleague Roger Christmann and me who direct the company. Me as artistic director and him as administrative director. So this was a big task. And I tried to be very honest with them and not do something behind the closed door and they'd say, okay, that's the way we do it. And it was a long exchange and a very, very detailed exchange about this whole Corona consequences and also about our not knowing what the future will bring. We just said, okay, this is what we plan for next week for the week after. In case the Corona stays, we have to do it this way. In case it gets better, we can go so far. So it was a constant adaptation to the situation. And the dancers I think and the whole company and the colleagues understood that this was the only way to handle it. Always have a plan B, CD and then find out which one will fit. And Bettina was very caring for us and we never feel like we have to do something if someone is afraid. It was always a possibility to explain and to say, no, for that I'm afraid. It was a while people were also trying to do some project. I mean, also to just bring the idea on the paper and somehow we have also been together for some times in a swimming pool outside, not to be near together, to be in the free share but to always to also discuss together to exchange, to give ideas, to even make some improvisation because it was a swimming pool where there's no water. You know, it was without water. So it was a moment, actually a bit in suspension for everybody I suppose. But for us, it was also a moment where we could think, release some new dancer could have also have the time to really go on some ideas, crazy ideas like Andre Beret-Zinso, for example, our Roushish dancer, also long time with Pina. He was making a solo in a stadium in Vobatal. It was great. It was cold, but he was there and it was really a great solo. So, and I think, yeah, it was the opportunity she gave us, Bettina and also Roger, but Bettina, I think more, give us the opportunity to try things, to think what we need, what we want now. It was like a little stop because we have to, but we could also imagine things and decide for later. And so now we are also ready. I think it puts also maybe somebody, some people together because we really want to find us together again in a studio, together again, not only online for the training, what was always organized, but that we really feel together now we can all, yesterday we have been- You did, sorry, you did online training as a company. Yes. Every day or once a week. Tell us a bit, how long and how is that organized? One hour was one hour and 15 minutes, maybe something like this, but it was even give some pieces of dance tapish. Dance tapi for whom? Dance carpet. Yeah, sorry, dance carpet. If someone wanted to have, to be able to really work, if it's not easy on the floor, you have. And it was, we have a really teacher with us, really. And then we have found us together in the morning at 10 o'clock and we have seen each other and we have worked together. So we have to do the bar at the kitchen table or everywhere when we put the, holding a wall or yeah, it was something like this, but actually it was very good because it was possibility. So for the entire last year, every weekday, the company rehearsed, checked in, somehow saw each other. Yes, so training was absolutely, absolutely possible. And for real, I think it was also, like Bettina says, sometimes organized, but sometimes it should also stopped because the new regal from Corona was one and one or one and two or nobody. And yeah, but it was also always possible to do something. To do something. Did you do a one-on-one? Did you do a one-on-one? By chance, no, by chance, no, because when it was, yes, I have done one-on-one, yes. How did you feel? How was that? For me, it was very good because one-on-one, it was for Schiff and Schiff, I am direct with Barbara Kaufmann, director, artist, I mean writer. How do you? Rehearsal director. Thank you, Bettina. So for Schiff, with Barbara and Julie Anstanzak also, an American dancer, we are the three and we are restaging Schiff, Nia from Saumagal also. And it was very nice for me to work and to give my role to Tsai-Shin. And this I really found it was incredible, very strong and near together. Even we have been taking care not to be too near, we have a mask or we have really caring about that. But it was very strong, maybe stronger as in another time because we have had this chance to be together and to really realize what it is now, this chance to be again together with one person, even with one person. And we have worked very, very beautifully and I was so happy to transmit, to transmit my role. I love that, I mean, yeah, it's just what we have to do, I think. Because this world should go on, have to go on and have to be passed. It's very important, I think. And it was fantastic for me. I just was very happy to do that. And sometimes I was going to look also as a rehearsal with when it was possible to be three. I was looking at Nazareth and Nayong. So as a possibility, when it was a possibility, we have taken always the other possibility. Incredible, it sounds like one of the most successful engagements at the time of corner of a company on ensemble I have heard from around the world. So it's a very big ship, a ship or a boat with that patina and it's scared. Yeah. It's a piece of pinners that haven't been done for 24 years. It's called The Piece with a Ship. And it's a huge ship corpus with a big sailing boat in a way and by Peter Papst. And yeah, and it has a lot of solos. It's a very dancey piece with a lot of solos. Everyone has solos. And Selena said we staged them in a way that is what I meant with adaptation to the situation. Whenever there was a way to go into the studio, we said, okay, so we can do one by one. The two of you can do the duet, but you apart from each, you away from each other in a distance from each other, but you do what you do. You hug each other, you do all the movements. It was a totally different working process, of course, that everybody had to adapt to. And it was also, I think, very creative because they had, everybody had to find new ways to approach this work. And I think it opened the view also and the horizon to new ways of working together. And everybody was just happy to work at all. And we had the difficulty other than other companies maybe who are run by a choreographer who could do, they could all do solos, duets or trios on stage with distance in between, create new pieces and show them digitally on internet, streaming or whatever. But Pina's pieces can't be streamed. First of all, the foundation will not allow us to do so. And secondly, I think that Pina's pieces are really not made for streaming because there are so many actions going simultaneously at the same time. And you have to always decide whom to follow and you have to make a film about it and make a new film story of this piece. But this is a whole big work, very intense, very time-taking, also very expensive. So this was no option for us to say, okay, we go, we stream the pieces, no problem. So we were not actually not present in the internet anymore. And what we did instead is what Helena just described. We tried to work on the pieces as much as possible and to be ready, the moment the city or government would say, okay, you can open up again. You can open the opera house again. You can have like, instead of 75, 750 spectators, you can have 200 that we were ready to go on stage and show the repertoire. So that's what we did. We sort of kept it going and kept it alive and we're just prepared for everything which works for a certain time. But it's limited. After a while, you feel like you're working and it's all, you know, nobody can see it. It's all done as I call it as a ghost performance. And it's not very satisfying for them. So for an artist, I think to do that for a long, long time. So we really have to- Yeah, you're like a cloister setting, right? You know, you- And now we were actually- But you needed Pina Baus, Pina's ideas was to have the person as an artist. Absolutely. These pieces also need this exchange, this communication with the public. There are so many pieces where the dancers go into the public and talk with them, show photographs, invite them on stage or invite them for a talk. So it's, yeah, it's based on this communication that was Pina's idea behind it, as Helena described, you know, that you felt close to- And it wouldn't really work on screen. It's like saying a Tintoretto painting, you know, which is like 20 feet by 30 feet. And you have a little slide and you try to have it in your hand and you try to, in the old slide we're seeing how the, yeah, it gives you an idea of how the painting look, but has nothing to do with it. One question, Bettina, about this big boat, Pina Baus-Tanzeta, how is it organized? You mentioned the foundation, they also, Salomon Baus, wonderful. The son of Pina who runs a foundation, then there is the city, I guess, of Wuppertal, that supports it. And I know Bettina Mills, and I think the state itself is creating also a center or so. Tell us a little bit, not for our American listeners to get envy, or whatever, just to say, this is a model that kind of works. So to see how are the beams of that house, how if it's a ship, you take away the wooden blanks, but how does it look? How is it structured? Could you give us an overview? It's very special in a way also in German because it's a city-owned company. It's a GmbH, Pina Baus-Tanzeta, Wuppertal, Pina Baus. So a city-owned, I didn't say again, what does that mean? That means that we get subsidy from the city, from the country, North Rhine-Westphalia, and we have to earn money to have income by touring. So it's like one third for everything. Really? One third touring, really, that's a tough one. No, I think it's not exactly, it's like 20-something. But still, that's a lot. Yeah, but still, we have to tour to get- 70 people, yeah. Yeah, and that's special because you know, the German theater system is based on state theaters and city-municipal theaters, mainly. And Pina got independent. And I mean, the collaboration, as you say, with the foundation, I mean, the foundation is the owner, the copyright owner, holds the copyright on all the pieces of Pina. So what we normally do, Salomon Baus and I, we send him the plans for the next season and we talk about what do you think is important. I told him that I would like to restage the pieces of the 70s because I think they are somehow the source of Pina's work. And you see so beautifully how she developed. She started with these opera, dance operas by Gluck, Iphigenia, and Orphois. And then Blaubart, which is a very radical piece. It's like the opposite. The step that she made was enormous from the choreographing an opera and then suddenly do Blaubart, which is also an opera score and do it in a totally different way. It was a big scandal. And then she took Shakespeare apart, the Macbeth. He takes her by the hand and leads her to the castle the others follow. So it's like a kaleidoscope of Pina's work and her ideas and also her thoughts about how to create new formats, new forms for dance for the way she wanted to tell what she had to say and to create a form that was no longer representative but was a form that, as Helena mentioned before, that was talking about everyday life, about people's emotions, about people's fears, about their failing, their failures, about their mistakes, about love and the lack of love and all these things which were never part of the ballets of the 19th century. They were just fairy tales, most of them. So she was the one to put dance on a totally different level. Also intellectually, although she wasn't an intellectual, I wouldn't call her an intellectual person, but she, I mean, it was like literature. It was so complex. I mean, every piece you can read like a piece of literature. There are so many layers on top of each other and not only one on top of each other, but it's like a network, you know, the whole piece with all these references to topics like, I mean, the masterpiece I think is Macbeth really, the way everybody is the victim and everybody is the murderer and everybody is Lady Macbeth and it's such a complexity in these pieces. It's incredible. So this is something that I talk about with Salomon. And he has a building as the foundation or he is in the theater or... No, no, they have a place close to us where they have an office and all these very special, as you know, very special rooms with, it has to be a special climate for all these photographs and videos and films and the archive that he's responsible of. And we have a very good connection. And but it's not that, I mean, we need the copyright of course always, but for our everyday work, it's not that we constantly work together with the foundation. It's just the other... And do you have to say the city, what your plans are? Do they have to... Yes, we have... Yeah, we have... We send a letter and... Yeah, we have a board of directors there and but we have a very good communication with them and they are very supportive. Everybody, also Bettina Mills and the ministry, we're in constant exchange of everything that we do, that we plan and they support us very much. And they also support this, what I mentioned before, that we open up to many other things. We have a new education program because I think education of young people and of the future audience that we all need when we're working in theater. It has to be a constant offer, a constant possibility for pupils to come, to work on pieces of Pina, to get to know her as a person who she was as an artist. The exchange with the students from the Falkwang University of the arts in Essen, where Pina grew up in a way, as a dancer and as a choreographer. The opening up also of inviting a lot of external artists, what we do next season, we work with Anish Kapoor, who will hold a lecture and one of our artists that we invited, invited choreographers is Richard Siegel. He's an American, he's from Maine and he's working in Germany for a long time and he made a new piece in the installation of Anish Kapoor called Shooting to the Corner. And now another group is coming to get to know the company, it's Peeping Tom from Belgium, a group that both of them, Dabriela Carizzo and Frank Chartier, they both said, they're one of the many, many, many artists that you mentioned in the beginning in your introduction, who consider themselves having been extremely influenced by Pina's work, impressed by her work, but at the same time, they somehow followed her path and developed their own art on this ground that they found there, these new way of telling stories, not... What's the idea of the Pina Bausch Center? Is it like a place where you will invite the artist? Or is it the archive? Or is it retirement plans for dancers? What is it? This is exactly the other end of what I was just talking about. It's supposed to become a place, a cultural center, an art center with four different members, collaborators, that's the Tanzdiata Pina Bausch, the company, it's a production center which gives commissions work to other people, to new artists, to new choreographers, but it's also interdisciplinary as Pina's work has always been. Then it's the foundation, they will be part and they will have their rooms there, their archive in this house and also work together with the company and with the other members. And then also it's supposed to be a place for the civil society of Wuppertal, communities, all kinds of... We have a lot of immigrants, Wuppertal has 350,000 inhabitants and about one third of them are from other countries in the world. I did not know that. That's a lot. That is all. Taking care of this and making possible that people can live together, know something about each other and get closer to each other is a big task, also a challenge for the city. It's not a rich city, not a wealthy city and I think it's an enormous effort to build this house, the Pina Bausch Center, to have it, really to have an international art center in this... So we'll be a building that in the moment does not exist? Yes, it exists. It exists. Yeah, it has a little story behind it. It was the Schauspielhaus, what I mentioned before. Oh, okay. It was a place where she created a lot of her pieces and then both houses, the opera house and the Schauspielhaus had a lot of lacks in terms of fire, emergency situations, stuff like that. So they had to be renovated, both of them. But the city didn't have the money to renovate both. So they decided they give the money to the opera. The opera had been restored and everything made new, the stage and everything. And also the accessibility for handicapped people and everything. And they decided that they don't have the money to do it with both houses. So the Schauspielhaus had to be closed down and it was like really in a rotten situation already. And then they decided to make it, to close it down as a normal theater and make it a place for dance, which was really the first time in Germany. What normally happened, I was involved in politics for dance a lot in the last 15 years. And normally we had to really suffer from closed down companies, closed down dance departments, but never ever has a Schauspielhaus turned into a house for dance. So that was really what are the first time. And now we have the finances for it. It's going to be paid by the cultural department of the government of Germany, Northern Westphalia, the ministry for culture and the city of Uppertal. And it's going to be open on 26, 27. And at the moment it's one of my jobs to really give a lot of input into how can a place like that look in the future? What will be the needs of the future generations? How, what will they ask from art, from dance and other art forms? And we're discussing that a lot with people from the city, with experts from all over the world and try to find best practice examples also in other countries who already have, like we had a talk with Kessie Levy from the National Arts Center in Ottawa and with people from Ghent, from Faruit which is a big center with Alistair Spaulding from Settlers-Wells in London and also German places to find out which is the best way to put these four contributors together and have them work on a repertoire and an open house that welcomes the world but also the people from Uppertal and not only artists but everybody who wants to read a book, watch a film of Pina's work, discuss things with other people, sit there and have a tea, cook together, whatever and see Pina's works on stage and new works from new choreographers. So a very alive and vibrating place and center in the middle of Uppertal. Incredible, this is such wonderful news to know that such places are developing and they will be coming out in the time after Corona and they are new places, like Le Diamant, I think Robert Le Page is opening that in Quebec, it's a completely new center, I think Tia Barsova in Poland, the great theater, they're building in a very significant public space, a completely new theater where they also think about new media. So it will be really interesting what will come out of Europe but as you point out and this also to your credit but of course to the great Pina that a dance company gets an entire building that kind of the drama house has been shut out as an incredible statement in itself and also shows how significant that work of the company is for the city and there's nothing you can hope more for for an artist that the place where you are and so many people talked about this in our talks, that where you are at matters that you reach out that you are connected to the community, that the city says, you know, this is our company, we give so many resources and actually also the city is known, they put up, oh, isn't that where Pina Bausch's company is? So it's used to be that kind of high level, magnetic transportation system but Pina worldwide took that over. It's wonderful, or Karyl Sturbranikov and he talked about the Gorky center in Moscow where he said, you know, we have one entrance, all the artists come in, the audiences come in, the cafe opens at nine o'clock in the morning, it's a meeting place, people can come and read, as you said, it's not the job of the kids to know about Chekhov, we have to help them, we have to make it interesting. They all stay after the performances and I think we need this new energy, which brings me to a question here and now since you're so close to the soul of the work also, but Pina of course also is, everybody thinks about, at least here, what can we do better? What should be different? And I think Pina, like Virginia Barba, so many others who have, she has found answers already. So I don't think we completely have to reinvent but what do you think? And many artists also are listening, sometimes we have 20 countries, people who are young artists or people who are developing work, what are the experiences of the company of Pina, or the work of Pina? Where you say, if you start new and Carol Sopremnikov said, we have to start completely new, we have forgotten what we did, just take the best, but we have to create something new or Cibyl Kampson from New York artist last week, she said, you know, we found out, there's no longer about the success, it was about, in a way, are we gonna die or not so who cares? So it's about our work together in the moment where we have to find meaning in it. So, but what do you think we can learn from Pina and your work that people should keep in mind? Yeah, I think I am just welcoming to me because I don't know if it's really answering to your question, but it's something coming to me very strongly. Zenzurt desire, real desire to do things. This is Zenzurt in Deutsch, I cannot explain in English so well because there is some special feelings in a special way. Longing desire in between, yeah. Yeah, I think it's very necessary to have this also and to want to do things, to have this desire who are alive also because it's not, because of Corona or everything can come, war and everything can hit you and, but even death, but yeah, it's only the possibility to be in life, to have this feeling coming back and to really want you to do things and to have a force and to have force, to be strong, to want to live, to want to dance. I remember, I just, maybe I'm not really answering to your question, but I just remember when, because it was happening some times, we have people dying in some moment from pieces from Pina, for example, Tenshi, the Japan production and we have had three people dying in the time we have had Thomas Erdoz, who was a very, very important person for Pina, where looking, this person was very much looking where he could bring Pina to let the people know Pina, who were from Pina and we have had also another friend from the Technica dying and also in another time, we have had Manuel Alum dying. So it was a moment where Pina said, what can we do? What can we do? We just can dance. It's no other things to do, it just can dance. Don't talk, just dance. And it was very strong for her, these things. And I think we have to find back our roots, our zenzut for our living. And maybe like this, we will also respect more the life from other people. We find this back in our world because now life is sometimes so like just nothing and it's not like that. It's nothing and it's everything. Just going like a little light like that coming here and then little light goes away again. So but this time between the beginning from the little light coming here and going away, it's so extraordinarily fantastic. And we have to do something else. We have, yeah. No, no, really. This is important that we do something in the time and say dance and stretch to your zenzut, to your desire or the longing for life. But Pina, for you, what do you think can be transferred? What the company does in strategies and thinking or drama to what they learn for the people? What do you think is something that people should keep in mind? I think talking about Pina and her pieces, she's, I think what was so special and outstanding about her was this humanity that she brought on stage. She made the people not be afraid to talk about your personal failures, to talk about what doesn't work, to talk about your experience that you normally would hide behind a wall and not talk about it. And I think she was extremely empathic. And for me, this is one of the means that we should develop again much more. In a Christian sense, maybe as a next and lieber, I don't know the word in English, but I'm not religious at all. But I think this is one of the, for me, the most important message also now in Corona times to take care of the other people, to see that there's somebody who is weaker than you and that you have to support and not just go and be successful and follow your goals, but look left and right to follow your goals. But look left and right, who's there with you? And I think what Helena calls Sehnsuch is also this longing for being close to others, understand them, find out who they are. And in a time of these big migrant movements at the moment where people are coming from Africa to Europe and from, I don't know, from India to us and the other way around it, we have to be interested in other people. We have to be curious, who are you? How do you lead your life? What are you doing when you suffer? And I think these are incredible, interesting subjects also for art, of course, to go deeper into all these emotions and the reasons for it. And I think that that is indeed a new way now, again, also politically because we find out that all this individual satisfaction maybe is not the only way to go, but we maybe have to look more into the community again and find a way together against pandemics but also against loneliness and poorness and a lot of other and also to save our planet. It's a common task, it's a common challenge. We all have to do it together. It's not the task that somebody can do individually. And I think Pinar has also in the way she worked, she created pieces, this contribution of everybody on stage. She never said, okay, do this step or make this scene or here's the dialogue you have to say. It was the dancers actually who contributed with their experience, with their lives, with their individuality. And then she made something out of it, the way she cut things, she combined things. She made these big puzzle out of all these individual little experiences and adventures. And what she always reached in the end of the pieces, everybody was in love with everybody on stage in the end of the piece. You know, you have the feeling you want to get to know everybody, all these dancers, you want to know who they are, you want to meet them. And you had the feeling you're not excluded from what happened on stage, even not from the disasters and the dramas and you were part of it. And I think that was her big ability as an artist. Yeah, and what a role model, you know, as you point out to really adapt that to our life after all this is about us and the audience and that was so important to her. And what you said, the recognition that it, so much in the Western world especially is focused on the individual happiness or with one partner. If I have that one, then I'm happy and we are finding out, no, maybe it's a group of people, maybe it's your neighborhood, your company, the people who come from other places and you help them or you're in communication, you share some say, you know, the joyful celebration in the sorrows of life, you know, and that that is closer and theater shows up and her work showed it in the dramatized moment on stage that, and this is something to follow. So it's a whole philosophy for our own lives. So it's incredible. And as a final question, will we see, will there be a corona piece from a Pina Balsch company? Will there be a coffee muller in Corona? Because who else, one question could express that better. What, is there something in the works? No, but I think, as always, artists anticipate a lot of these vibrations that are in the air. And actually now I've just given two commissions to two artists. One is a member of the company for a long time, Reina Bea, who's also very much into choreography for years already. And I asked him to make a piece for the company for the big stage of the opera house. And the other one is Richard Siegel who comes from the tradition of William Forsyte. So they are like two endings of a long line, one very abstract tradition of new new classic and deconstruction and Reina Bea from this tradition of Pinas. And I saw both pieces now because they are almost finished and we will show them in front of the public next season. We had to postpone them. And there you see that both of them in a way talk about this isolation, this distancing, this isolation of the people in a totally different way and with totally different means, but both have something like this unknown bedroon. What is that in English? A threat. A threat. A threat, an unknown threat that is there somewhere, hiding and in both pieces this plays a big role. It's a big challenge for the dancers on stage and they deal with this moment of being threatened by something that they can't really touch, that they can't really describe and take into their hands but it's somewhere there outside and influencing them. And so it's in a way, it's two corona pieces indeed but it would never be named like that. But it sure, both pieces show very much this threat of coming from the outside that you cannot influence because you're helpless facing this. Created in that atmosphere of corona. And Helena, what are your upcoming works? What are you working on? Will you open? For the moment we are working soon about a piece we are dancing, I hope, we hope in September, this and that. So it's a production with Humbari, Humbari was a production at the time. So we do it again and I just have the time, the holiday time I will prepare myself because it's a hard piece for me to have a good job to do. So a lot to do, pieces to prepare, to rehearse, building new centers and building a new community, building on what we already have. It's incredible what you guys of course already did but also I think what a wonderful idea to think about that every day of this last year and a half you got together and rehearsed. So I had a training that dancers used the space even one-on-one and that you were thinking about the future and global collaborations. As a side note, it also shows what happens when dramaturgs are in charts of the ship and not people trained in marketing also or a look at bottom lines that is thinking of the reflection, making connections, unusual connections of significance and we have of course also great dramaturgs here and Katania will bring out her book on dramaturgy where she followed companies and the work of many men now says because I mean profetize someone who works a bit in dance at the dramaturgy here also in the US and but it shows really that it's an artistic engagement intellectual engagement but also a social engagement that works and that's important and that has an impact. Really thank you both. This was so enlightening. This is so much more than I could have hoped for. Thank you for sharing or taking the time I know how busy you all are and to find that time to us to spend together it was really worth it. I would like to thank the little bit Hayes. I think she was also part or was on your board for a while and still such a great supporter to help to make the connections and really all our respect and thanks from the world theater community to Tanztheater but of course how wonderful it would be if Pina Bausch had talked to us but she talks to us through you through your work and we see administrators, people who run places they are artists like Bettina they do the collage is a connection in this kind of enlarged understanding of an engagement of art and life they are very important pieces and it's really I think it's people should be encouraged to have a real dialogue also with dramaturgy and to see you know this is something that perhaps has answers for a lot of questions and the world is thankful of course for the Tanztheater that feel that Pina created it did not exist in that way before and we are so much richer for it and we gave us meaning also and that our listening to you you gave us something very special so thank you both and I hope to see you I hope the plays, dance pieces will come to New York the old ones, the new ones and I can't wait to have a tea in the Pina Bausch Center and pick up a bowl and you know and see if the interconnection really works or not okay bye-bye thank you very much thank you thank you very much Salomon foundation Bettina the city everybody will support you what a great great model to look at thank you very much for the invitation thank you thank you very much bye