Pina Bausch’s Nelken (Carnations) opens with a breathtaking image, as dancers in evening dress wade through a field of 8,000 pink carnations, standing tall and lovely. They sit in chairs, basking in the beauty. By the close, the artificial flowers lie trampled and tattered, but the dancers reassemble, arms curved over their heads in balletic attitude, an image of order amid the chaos they have wrought.
In between, in just under two hours, Bausch conjures scenes that dance along a tightrope between innocence and threat, using her unique blend of words and movement to create a collage of a society fractured by fear and violence yet full of the possibility of hope. Nelken is full of indelible pictures. Guards with German shepherd dogs patrol the field where men in dresses bunny-hop like kids; a bedraggled line of childish dancers play a game of grandma’s footsteps where no one is sticking to the rules. A man repeatedly demands to see people’s passports, forcing them into humiliating actions. Scaffolding towers are wheeled on; suddenly, shockingly, men jump into a heap of cardboard below as a woman screams. Love and sadness are constantly intertwined.
