A dancer’s work is written on the wind – when they stop performing, it’s a little death. At various points in this engagingly ruminative show, a veteran dancer from Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal will come forward to announce their name and entreat, “don’t forget.” Every time they urge us to remember, it pierces your heart. Because one day we will forget – just as we will be forgotten in turn.
Bausch, with her signature weave of dance and all-too-recognisable behaviour, created ‘Sweet Mambo’ just a year before her death in 2009. It’s mellower than her frantic early works: the agitated thrum of desire has calmed. Her women, so often tormented by domineering blokes, here indulge them. And these men are daft meat puppets, sacrificing every shred of dignity for the chance of a nuzzle.
