Watching Wim Wenders' Pina, a documentary on the peerless contemporary dance choreographer Pina Bausch, I was reminded of Robert Altman's The Company, a film about the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. Both films tried to bring attention to legendary dance troupes, but where The Company floundered under Altman's scatter-shot direction, Pina shines bright both in form and content. One of the great geniuses of Tanztheater, a German artistic movement that combined elements of dance and drama, Pina's pieces told stories and gave her performers chances to delve into their own psyches to explore their own inhibitions, fears, and dreams. So the film does not give a narrative of Pina's life per se. Instead, it provides footage of several of her most famous pieces (including her breath-taking rendition of The Rite of Spring where dancers performed on a stage covered in a thick layer of peat) and individual testimonies from many of her greatest collaborators and students. Each one of these segments gives the subjects a chance to describe Pina's impact on their lives and their skills as dancers as well as brief dance pieces set against the backdrop of Wuppertal, the city where her troupe was based. The result is a collage of tributes, reflections, and recreations of dance numbers that changed the face of modern dance. As such, Pina is a far superior tribute to dance than The Company could have ever hoped to be.
9/10
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