La plainte de l’impératrice

A woman sweeps leaves in a forest with a leaf blower, another one makes her way through a muddy fi eld, or slops into an armchair in the middle of the traffic. With The Complaint of an Empress, Pina Bausch breaks away from theatre and confronts her dancing with Wuppertal, where she used to work. Relocated this way, the body becomes farcical, movements run idle, long dresses and high heals get tangled up. As if dancers, those masters of movement, had to learn to move again once immersed in real life.