Club Amour

Café Müller / Aatt enen tionon / herses, duo

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Boris Charmatz



"Club Amour" makes visible the history of bodies accumulated in a dance company. Boris Charmatz, the new artistic director of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, presents his creative approach to dance heritage, his belief in the collective, and the power of the body as a medium of memory.



"The word "repertoire" begins with the syllable "re." Repertoire - it means repetition, recursion and return. Cultural memory requires both archives to preserve history in material form and regular re-enactments. Without external stimuli, living memories do not emerge."

Marietta Piekenbrock, January 2023



Boris Charmatz, the new artistic director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, will create an evening entitled "Club Amour" with a composition of three works - the piece "Café Müller" by Pina Bausch and two works choreographed by himself. All three pieces touch on themes of desire, sexuality, nudity, intimacy, longing and failure: in "Aatt enen tionon" (1996), three dancers, locked alone and unaided in different rooms of a three-story scaffolding tower, interpret precise choreography half-naked. "herses, duo" is an excerpt from the piece "herses (une lente introduction)" (1997), which expresses "utopias of union" in a direct way. In "Café Müller" (1978), a masterpiece by Pina Bausch, Henry Purcell's "Remember me" is performed. Here, the symbolic stage setting of the revolving door is emblematic of repetition and return.



Pina Bausch, who came to Wuppertal in 1973 as director of the ballet department, gave the Wuppertal Ballet its new name, Tanztheater. Her idea of fusing dance and theater revolutionized dance and made her an icon of a new style of expressive dance. She was awarded numerous international prizes, the repertoire of this dance ensemble became world famous, and its pieces are still performed all over the world.

The Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch has left its mark on the history of dance and celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2023. Since the 2022/23 season, French dancer and choreographer Boris Charmatz (*1973) has taken on this great challenge. As director of the company, he is about to open a new chapter. Both Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal and Boris Charmatz have been guests at the Berliner Festspiele several times.



"In the first film versions of 'Café Müller,' it is striking how much the actors desire each other. The bodies strive toward each other, sense each other, the fingers seek touch. The life of the theater overlaps with the lives of the artists. The roles seem to be tailored to the dense web of relationships between the people. This made me want to show the play on an evening when love and desire are at the center. I thought of two pieces in 'my' repertoire that also deal with these issues. It is an attempt: to give the dancers of Tanztheater Wuppertal, who have not yet interpreted these pieces, the opportunity to deal with the brittle subtlety of 'Café Müller' and the unbridled radicality of 'Aatt enen tionon' and to present this duo from the piece 'herses (une lente introduction)' with bodies intertwined in perfect union. It should be a lively evening: Purcell meets PJ Harvey, the timeless costumes of 'Café Müller' contrast with the nudity of 'Aatt enen tionon', the three pieces will make Tanztheater Wuppertal 2024 vibrate!"

Boris Charmatz, March 2023



Artistic Team

Club Amour

Boris Charmatz - Conception

With the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch

Café Müller (1978)

Pina Bausch - staging & choreography

Rolf Borzik - stage design and costumes

Marion Cito, Hans Pop - collaboration

Henry Purcell - music

Duration 40 min

Aatt enen tionon (1996)

Boris Charmatz - choreography

Yves Godin - light

Gilles Touyard - scaffolding

Hubertus Biermann, Olivier Renouf - sound

PJ Harvey - sound material

duration 40 min

herses, duo

Duo from "herses (une lente introduction)" (1997)

Boris Charmatz - choreography

Yves Godin - light

Stefan Fraunberger- music

duration 15 min

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Boris Charmatz - production and distribution Club Amour