It started one night in , when I hit an unintended button on my remote control. I was confronted with what looked like an alternative Miss World contest: a line of provocatively solemn women in long silk s gowns were baiting an equally teasingly serious line of men in tuxedos.
They all seemed to be playing party games. Who was winning? I sat transfixed for the next three hours. By the end it was an uneasy tie, I decided, each performer both victor and victim. Whoever had conceived it had a complex, sophisticated vision of human affairs as a messy mosaic of warring impulses.
Holidays from now on were plotted around its schedule. Paris was easiest. I would queue early in the morning outside the Chatelet Theatre for a day ticket when the company made its annual visit. I went to Edinburgh, to Berlin, to Wuppertal itself.
I have never tired of wanting to immerse myself in this uniquely rich world, to expose myself to what it flings out at me β beauty, pain, anxiety, laughter. The occasional hippo lumbering through six inches of water. I wanted more than anything to re-encounter the dancers who are the fibre and tissue of the pieces and who so generously give of themselves β apparently as themselves β that you end up thinking you know them. Beatrice and Jan?
Helena and Dominique? I once asked her where the inspiration for her pieces came from. There was the usual long pause, the signature smiling shrug and nod of the head. So I have to confess feeling something of a fraud, writing this piece.
