Nevertheless, viewers and critics cannot attribute all the themes in The Rite of Spring because she provided an interpretation of the piece not an original work. Cafe Muller on the other hand is an original work by Bausch. The piece is very rich with information about Bausch’s style and techniques as well as her personal background. Growing up observing patrons visiting her parents’ restaurant, she had exposure to a wide pool of human experiences and emotions to make the basis for this art work.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph in 2001, Bausch told the interviewer that the cafe’s patrons she watched growing up were a “formative influence” on her view of sexual attractions. “It was a place where life happens, and couples have love affairs and fights,” she said, “I saw that love was a strong relationship in which anything can happen. For some people, fighting is exciting; life would be boring without it. ” It was her early window to life. Bausch provides her audience with insight to the world in Cafe Muller by utilizing one of her signature techniques: repetition.
She is known for making her dancers repeat routines to the point of physical and mental exhaustion. To offer a glimpse of how much Pina Bausch relied on repetition in her work, and its effect on her audience, shows. During an early Bausch performance, one outraged audience member invaded the stage, grabbed a bucket of water that a dancer was using as a prop, and tried to chuck it over another dancer who was reciting a poem over and over ad nauseam – but she ducked, and the audience was drenched instead. So why did Bausch rely so heavily on repetition?
She does that to make sure that we reflect on emotions we experienced before, but we decided to bury down to protect ourselves. She does that to emphasize the importance of dance movement as opposite of regarding it as a fleeing moment. She wants the audience to reflect on their emotions while they watch. She said in an interview with The New York Times in 1985 : ‘Repetition is not repetition,”. “The same action makes you feel something completely different by the end. I repeat something and after three times, the person should react. Which person- the interviewer asked- the viewer or the dancer? “Both,” The power of this technique is illustrated in Cafe Muller. The piece takes place in a salon with no light except what escapes through a glass door as the cafe’s only connection to the rest of the world. The stage is occupied with wooden black chairs and tables. Two ladies ( Pina Bausch) and another dancer (Malou Airaudo) enter the stage dressed in a long white chiffon gown. Each one enters the stage closed eyes and wanders slowly as if she is sleepwalking, but they have different experiences.
Pina Bausch in the background walks in a faltering gait alongside the wall. She seems isolated from her surrounding and absorbed in a life of loneliness. As she wanders, she raises her arms to the height of her waist, and opens her hands. The gesture seems to suggest a way to protect herself, but it is not successful. She keeps hitting the walls of the cafe, a metaphorical and a literal wall of physical and mental barriers. The other dancer also wanders around the stage with closed eyes. She also seems to be depressed, but she is not completely alienated even though she might not realize that.
She walks around the stage, but before she hits obstacles represented by the chairs and the tables, a man in a suit races fanatically barefoot to push them away, and clear her path. They repeat this routine about a dozen times until he is fatigued. The man is often characterized as a “wandering waiter” clearing the tables suggesting that he has no emotional attachment to the woman; he clears the table because it is his duty. Additionally, critics use this scene as an epitome to criticize Bausch because the man in the suit represents power and strength, while the woman is helpless.
I disagree. I believe that her critics analyze this scene as an isolated episode within the performance leading them to characterize it as another example of Bausch’s anti-feminism. However, I believe the power of this scene is revealed in watching it repeatedly from different perspectives. This routine is repeated about half way through the show, except this time the man in the suit clears the path for a male dancer whose eyes are also closed and who makes the similar gesture with his open arms.
The man in the suit clears the tables from his way with the same concerned look he had while he helps the female dancer. I believe that this is Bausch’s way of telling her audience that both men and women need help. The man in the suit aided both the man and the woman without discrimination. Furthermore, he does not wait for any recognition, or tangible reward. He runs silently to clear other peoples’ path, but he exits the stage when he is done. He does not enforce a specific formation of the tables and chairs, or the path on any of the dancers. He simply aids them.
Despite the power of the previously described scene, it is not the most celebrated or in Bausch’s case attacked scene in Cafe Muller. When they talk about Cafe Muller, critics and scholars often describe the repeated embrace between the male and female dancers scene as an illustration of the repetition technique. In this scene a suited male dancer who functions as an organizer or a director. He step by step manipulates the still closed eyes man and the women from the previous scene ir series of positions until first, they are embracing each other first, and then he makes them kiss.
Afterwards, he makes the man carry the woman. When he is satisfied with his work he exits the stage, but before he can do so, the woman slips from the man dancer’s arms and falls on the floor. The cycle repeats for eight times. In the end, he leaves, but the man and the woman keep repeating the motions every time the woman falls as a form of a habit. This repeated motion signifies that relationships between genders are learned and socially dictated, and eventually performed out of habit.
It suggests that crafted relationships are ound to fail. Despite his diligence the organizer fails to enforce a faith on the couple. I believe this scene functions to itelize the meaning of the previous scene where the suited man offered help but did not force any results. Many critics however do not share this regard this narrative as mere repetition resulted from the choreographer’s barren imagination. Arlene Croce from The New Yorker wrote in his article “Dancing: Bad Smells” in 1984: “The rhythm of a Pina Bausch piece is obsessively regular.
Bursts of violence are followed by long stillnesses. Bits of business are systematically repeated, sometimes with increasing urgency but more often with no variation at all. At every repetition, less is revealed, and the action that looked gratuitous to begin with dissolves into meaningless frenzy. ” She describes the cafe as canteen of a mental hospital, and she describes the work as monotonous with repetition as its only device making it feel ninety minutes instead of its actual duration of thirty five minutes.
