Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Boris Charmatz: Vollmond review

It’s the set that gets you with Vollmond. Created in 2006, this piece was one of Pina Bausch’s last for her Tanztheater Wuppertal company before her death in 2009. And her long-time designer, Peter Pabst, so skilled at creating worlds for her dancers to play in, made something extraordinary for this boisterous examination of relationships in all their knottiness.

A huge glistening rock dominates a dark stage – a giant boulder with a magnetic, almost alien presence, worn smooth and ready to be clambered over, glinting in a suggestion of moonlight (Vollmond means ‘full moon’). It takes a good 15 minutes for you to realise there is a pool of water below it, a silent ‘river’ flowing underneath it, which tugs the dancers towards it as the evening progresses. 

In fact, there’s water everywhere. Glasses are filled to overflowing; bottles, then buckets, are poured over dancers; mouthfuls are spat in arcs; a water pistol is used to knock paper cups off a woman’s head. And then there’s the rain – gentle at first, then an increasing downpour each time it returns. A procession of male dancers punt themselves across the stage with sticks; male and female dancers slide with seeming abandon across the increasingly slippery surface. 

Meanwhile, women swim in the shadowy river, disappearing under the rock; one floats along silently on an inflatable bed. The original cast member Ditta Miranda Jasjfi dips her long hair in it and sends up glittering plumes as she tosses her head. By the end of Vollmond a childlike joy has seized the 14-strong cast – its members scoop up bucketfuls of water to hurl at the rockface, creating coruscating cascades; they kick up arcs like a flamenco dancer’s bata de cola, and dance with drenched delight.

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