Nelken was a brave piece of programming for Valentine’s Day. The choreographer Pina Bausch famously dug into traumatic relations between the sexes, but although this 1982 work goes to some dark places, it’s festooned in flowers and ends in something like hope.
The title means carnations – 8,000 silk blooms in vivid shades of pink cover the stage, stalks piercing the floor. At first, dancers step delicately between them – we hear the deliberate clunk of sole and heel. But as things turn frenetic, voices become ragged, bodies shine with effort and flowers lie trampled and crestfallen.
