For dancer Anique Ayiboe, entering the world of “The Rite of Spring” has been a journey of discovery.
The Togolese dancer, who has been traveling and performing with the renowned Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal production since the fall of 2021, says it’s been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Honoring Bausch, who died at age 68 in 2009, the touring production has now been seen in Germany, Spain, France, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, and Ayiboe’s native Togo, as well as recent appearances in New York and Los Angeles. This week, it comes to Berkeley under the auspices of Cal Performances for three performances, Feb. 16-18.
With dancers from 14 African countries and a long list of co-producers, the appearance features “The Rite of Spring” as well as a performance of Bausch’s “common ground(s),” co-created by Germaine Acogny, known as “the mother of African contemporary dance,” and Malou Airaudo, a longtime dancer with Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal.
Ayiboe has been with the “Rite of Spring” tour from the beginning. In a recent phone call from a tour stop in Los Angeles, she said she had been studying African dance when she auditioned for the Bausch company in 2019; she went back to Togo, then returned to join the “Rite of Spring” tour. She’s one of three dancers in the production’s central role of the Chosen One — a character who is singled out from the group to make the ultimate sacrifice.
It’s a daunting assignment, one that requires tremendous strength, force, and stamina. At first, she said, she found the role, which Bausch herself had performed, to be enormously difficult.
“I saw my name on the list, but I was afraid — it was too much, too hard,” she recalled. Since then, she’s performed the role over four years and 300 performances — and, she says, she’s learned a lot.
“It’s very physical,” she said. “I don’t know how Pina did this solo, but it’s more than dance. It’s not just about movement — it’s about you: what do you live in this moment? What is your story?”
Now, she says, it’s like a trance. “You have to be in another place, in your mind, and in your body.”
Stravinsky’s score propels the work, she adds: “In four years of doing this piece, we cannot understand how Pina could see it: the movement and the music are together.”
Still, she says, Bausch’s choreography fuses with the score in astonishing ways. “You don’t just dance the rhythm. You dance the whole music.”
Choreographers have set “The Rite of Spring” in vastly different ways over the years. American choreographer Mark Morris, for example, made his “Spring, Spring, Spring” a kind of ecstatic hoedown in nature.
Bausch’s vision, in contrast, is stark, elemental. The physical language is often anguished. The choreographer specified that it be performed on a dirt floor, which many dancers would find daunting. Cal Performances is fitting Zellerbach Hall to her specifications; Ayiboe said it feels familiar.
“In Africa, we used to dance on the ground,” she said. “We are more connected that way in our traditional dance.”
Still, she added, the work poses its own special challenges.
“With this piece, you are off-balance,” Ayiboe said. “I don’t know how Pina thought about this, bringing the earth onstage. But it gives us strength to go, to go. Even if you are off-balance, you are trained to go, to dance. I feel that in this piece I’m off-balance, but I find the strength to be grounded.”
“The Rite of Spring” is the first Bausch work Ayiboe has performed, aside from pieces she learned in her training. Dancing the role of the Chosen One, she said, is both an honor and a monumental challenge.
“This piece is about a ritual,” she said. “You must sacrifice something. It’s our normal life — we sacrifice something to have something good. It’s life. So for me, this role has meaning — to give yourself, good or bad. It makes me grow — physically, mentally, spiritually.”
“For me as an African,” she added, “it’s a great opportunity to do this piece, to go around the world, to keep Pina’s work alive. To show people that Africans can do this. I’m proud of us, and for me, I gain a lot of strength, a lot of knowledge, in this piece. It makes me go beyond my limits.”
Contact Georgia Rowe at [email protected].
‘THE RITE OF SPRING’
Choreographed by Pina Bausch, performed by Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal, with “common ground(s),” by Germaine Acogny and Malou Airaudo; presented by Cal Performances
When: 8 p.m. Feb. 16-17, 3 p.m. Feb. 18
Where: Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley
Tickets: $38-$86; calperformances.org
