Questions that Remain
To begin her creative process, the legendary German choreographer Pina Bausch often asked her dancers questions. These questions—and further, the thoughts and deeper rumblings they provoked in the dancers—then formed the basis for many of her pieces. Bausch was typically concerned with the emotional and psychological charge of the bodies she choreographed on, and no piece showcases this more than her 1982 masterwork “Nelken.” Premiered eight years before the reunification of Germany, and haunted by other atrocities of that country’s not-so-distant past, “Nelken” does not escape shades of brutality; still, its primary concern seems to lie in the various ways our closest relationships can provide comfort. How, Bausch seems to ask, can we care for each other despite the horrors?