Pina Bausch Tanztheatre Wuppertal

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

German choreographer Pina Bausch’s elegant, often absurd images vacillate between the intimate and the spectacular. Crouched in a niche gouged out of a huge fake tree, a man takes a leisurely cigarette break. A woman empties some sort of powder from her panties. Men scale walls like flies to sultry music. Assembled dancers of both sexes do backbends amid a shower of falling leaves. Nur Du (Only you, 1996), Bausch’s site-specific dance-theater work created during a short LA residency, was intended in part to reflect her take on the city. The varied score featured tangos, fados, jazz, and doo-wop. The most compelling aspects of the piece dealt with concerns common to all of Bausch’s projects—the nature of femaleness, vanity, modesty, loss, and the flesh-and-blood envelopes we all seem to be stuck wearing—though in a much lighter tone than previous works. Bausch has a sly sense of humor, and

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