Is it all just expressive dancing?

Yeah, it is pretty much all expressive dancing.

The whole film is dedicated to the work of German choreographer Pina Bausch. In addition to the dance performances it also includes interviews with Pina's dancers and old friends.

The film features performances of four of Pina Bausch’s works: Café Müller, Le Sacre du Printemps, Vollmond (Full Moon) and Kontakthof. It shows scenes performed in the theatre and also takes the dancers out of the theatre into the city and the surrounding area. These are visually the most stunning scenes.

And the music is exhilarating.

I loved the film and went back to see it a second time. I wish I would get a chance to see one of these ballets performed on stage.

Largely expressive - and physical - dancing, but with interviews and other footage as well. It also seems to be that it may be the more accessible end of Bausch's work - I spent years reading about the weirder side of her dances and decided that it sounded not my cuppa tea at all. Then her company brought Rite of Spring to London, and I thought I really ought to go and see it, and had my view of her completely changed. She died not that long after.

The rendering of the dance work is generally very good - far above the recent "Giselle in 3D", which I didn't think worked - and there are very big chunks of it. I'd agree that it's still not perfect, and dancers who get too close to the "front" of the screen look rather odd, and not quite human, but the 3D largely works very well, especially in "Rite". That said, I saw a 2D trailer of it the same day, and that looks very impressive on its own, too.

Quite stunning, but a bit over-long, I thought - my eyes were getting tired before the end.

Saw this film today, only online and it's true what the other posters above said that it's mostly dancing. It was engrossing to me because this is the first time I've seen a full length movie showing expressive contemporary dance throughout. I've seen some excerpts of this type as performed by some professional dancers in our auditorium during my college days way back then, and also seen a few in some tv performances, but those were mostly brief ones.

I got interested to watch this purely from what I think is its attractive thumbnail poster of a girl who obviously looked like a dancer with her feet together in a jump, knees bent, her flared red orange skirt fluffy in the air, her arms spread wide in the air above her head, so I thought this must be a musical movie with dancing, but apart from that I didn't have the slightest idea what this movie is all about. The first scene though hooked me right away, with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Made me recall the movie Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, with the Russian composer's music received unfavorably when he first played it. I was thankful that Pina have English subtitles, so I understood that this was a German production, and that Pina Bausch is a choreographer. My first introduction to her, and got affected to learn during the movie's running time that she had already died, and that this film is a tribute to her by her dancers.

And the dancing I think conveyed a lot, I saw and felt a gamut of emotions watching the movements of love, passion, yearning for freedom (quite clear with the dancer with a long rope tied to her waist), humor as with a male dancer bringing down his pants and pulling it up again as he goes from one woman to another, another funny scene with two male dancers lying down and spitting water to each other, and a robotic female hilariously strangling a pillow while on a train. There's beauty and intensity in some dance movements. My favorite is the one where there's a background of a silent industrial city, the female dancer yelling "it's veal!" and then dancing en pointe for an astonishingly long time, looking as if she is weakening later on - reminiscent to me of The Dying Swan. Some of the arm and footwork as performed by some dancers resembled those of martial arts but has more grace, and yes there is the strength communicated to the viewer.

All in all, this is an interesting movie to me, though there is no plot, I don't even know if this can be categorized as a documentary since it's only about Pina Bausch as she tried to inspire her dancers to be their best, Pina Bausch as a dance artist. Dances performed wonderfully by unmistakably professionals of this type, the aesthetics definitely a feast for the eyes and the music something to relish as it changes to fit the various emotions portrayed in the film.




Truth inexorably,inscrutably seeks and reveals Itself into the Light.

Looks are deceiving!! This movie is awful...people rolling around in the mud is not dance. This was like watching a 4 year old's art project made into a documentary.