Tanzen Queen

Pina Bausch

The incomparable Pina Bausch. Prints now available.

I suppose it seems a smidge mean-spirited to tease poor Pina Bausch for the nicotine addiction that inevitably killed her. Lord knows, if I still had the lungs of a young dancer, as I did in my youth, I’d be enjoying a pack of Luckys as we speak. Alas, I do not have Pina’s stamina for smoking, much less for dancing.

What Ms. Bausch and I do share is Wuppertal, my home for the past almost-six years and Pina’s base of operations from 1973 until her death in 2009. Her modern dance group, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, continues to perform throughout the world today, and the new Pina Bausch Center is set to open in Wuppertal…well, soon, so they keep saying.

Today would have been her 84th birthday, had she managed to kick the butts. During her career, she pushed the art of dance forward a generation or three, blending music, movement, and theater production with a modernism that rejected traditional ballet tropes.

And she did it all between countless smoke breaks. Impressive.

- A.H.

(And let’s not forget Ashley’s website, jam-packed with portraits and other drawings, his highly-affordable prints and books currently available, his eagerness for your portrait commission, and his contact email, thrdgll@gmail.com, where he longs to hear from you.)