Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring/common ground[s], Sadler’s Wells review - raw and devastating

It takes a lot to make an audience not want to head to the bar at the interval. But the preparation of the stage floor for The Rite of Spring in the version by Pina Bausch is a piece of theatre in itself, and many at Sadler’s Wells couldn’t tear themselves away.

This is the second time that Sadler’s  has hosted this special production of Bausch’s extraordinary response to Stravinsky’s score. The choreography dates back to 1975, and for years was exclusively danced by Bausch’s home company. The idea of assembling and training a pan-African troupe to present it came much later, in a bid to explore new resonances in the work. And so it does. Most obviously, the dancers of L’Ecole des Sables, based in Senegal, bring a heightened muscular force to every leap and gesture.

Running and leaping on a hard floor is one thing, but Bausch requires it to happen on a thick carpet of soft, crumbly peat. It takes 10 stagehands a full 30 minutes to cover the Sadler’s stage with 3060kg of the stuff, first taking up the floor covering of the previous piece, then laying down a brown undersheet which they hammer to a wooden frame. The soil is then barrowed into place and raked to a meticulous even flatness. Within minutes of the strangulated bassoon opening of Stravinsky’s score (relayed in an uncredited recording by an uncredited orchestra), that flat surface is rutted and scarred, scuffed up by the urgent landings and trampling of 34 pairs of feet.

Where Kenneth MacMillan’s version of Rite channeled elements of the 1913 original staging, which depicted a prehistoric society of fearful tribespeople and their overlords, Bausch’s is all about pack mentality. A human sacrifice is required at the turn of the seasons to make the crops grow. It’s a personal honour that few dare to dream of, yet it’s also terrifying, as Bausch’s choreography makes clear as individual young women break free from their huddle to pick up then nervously reject the scarlet dress that signifies victimhood. The dance also makes clear the tribal groupthink – the acceptance that sacrifice is inevitable, that one life must end to enable life for all. Quite how mere choreography can achieve this is hard to credit. Technically, the movement comprises just a handful of motifs which gain force from being synchronised en masse – and repeated with a desperate feral energy. There’s a two-handed chop, a splay-legged bounce, a slap of the haunches and – now and again – a lyrical port de bras and pas-de-chat so beautiful that it startles.

A phalanx of women (pictured above), then of men, work these motifs in great surging diagonals across the space, the momentum matching Stravinsky’s blow for blow. When the Chosen One finally accepts her destiny and begins her solitary dance to death, the 33 others stand stock still and stare, aghast yet profoundly excited, as we the audience are too. My own feeling when the ordeal is finally over – and this happens every time I see this piece – are complicated. Horror and shame play no small part in it. I feel somehow that I shouldn’t be watching, and I’m convinced that Pina Bausch knew this when she made the piece. Nothing in her work happens by chance.

The opposite seemed to be true of the preceding common ground[s], a recent duet made as a companion piece to Rite. The work draws on the relationship between the two dance veterans who together mounted the pan-African production. Malou Airaudo (Western and white) and Germaine Acogny (African and black) had not previously met, but developed a strong bond – over-emphasised in this self-devised piece by an awful lot of hugging. More telling were such moments as when the pair sat on low stools with their backs to us watching a Senegalese sunrise (which was surprisingly easy to imagine). At 78 and 80 years of age, these women (pictured above) were obviously not going to give us gymnastics, but posing for endless minutes with each holding the end of a long pole was at once dull and obscure: the precise opposite of what followed in The Rite of Spring. The score by Fabric Bouillon LaForest for string quartet and keyboard was lovely, though, finding suggestions of African sonorities and textures in a classically Western frame. Happily, the programme remembered to name-check the musicians in this instance.

• The Rite of Spring / common ground[s] continues at Sadler’s Wells tonight and tomorrow, returns only
• Dancing at Dusk, a film made in 2020 of an outdoor dress-rehearsal of this production of Rite, is available to watch for free on Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage until 29 November
• Breath (Atem) is a sound installation offering a new perspective on The Rite of Spring via the sound of the dancers’ movements. 10 November throughout the afternoon, returns only
• More dance reviews on theartsdesk