The Works：Pina Bausch Cafe Muller & Rite of Spring, Trisha Brown Tribute & German Hornsound

The Works has been featuring Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal for over a decade, particularly during their visits to Hong Kong to perform at the annual Arts Festival. Dance lovers in Hong Kong have been lucky enough to see “Iphigenia In Tauris”, “1980”, “Full Moon” and “Carnations”. This year, the company was here again, this time with two of Pina Bausch’s very significant early works, “Café Muller” and “Rite of Spring”.
Pina changed people’s view of what dance could be by introducing theatrical elements and collaborating with her dancers to bring the human psyche and human emotions to the fore. American choreographer Trisha Brown, who died on 18th March at the age of 80, took dance in another direction, towards the more conceptual ideas of postmodernism. She was one of the pioneers of the New York postmodern dance tradition. In 2014, a year after she’d had to leave the company due to illness, the Trisha Brown Dance Company came to the Hong Kong Arts Festival with some of her most iconic works. We spoke to them.
Think of the German horn, and you may think of brass bands and beer, or – if you’re of a more sophisticated frame of mind – Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel’s horn theme, or Wagner’s Siegfried playing the horn that awakens the dragon Fafner. It’s a favourite instrument in German music, and that may be part of the reason that, in 2009, four friends at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts set up German Hornsound. The ensemble performs a repertoire that includes not only classical music but also original works and arrangements. They’re here in our studio with Ben Pelletier.