In 2016, the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn worked with the Pina Bausch Foundation to recreate the Lichtburg, first in the Bundeskunsthalle and then in the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin. The replica was an exhibition space, a place of pilgrimage, a temporary monument. A rehearsal room that only insiders were allowed to enter was transformed into a 1:1 cult object that people could walk through and dance in, where “the costumes still hang on the walls, her table and chair are still in the same place” (Boris Charmatz) – a place of eternity that is still used by the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch Terrain Boris Charmatz as a place to rehearse, where new pieces are created or resurrected and where guests and alumni, such as Judith Kuckart and Urs Kaufmann, also come together.
These two – Judith Kuckart and Urs Kaufmann – have now created a masterpiece, a story about this place. It is a place which Urs Kaufmann knows inside out, having helped to design ten new productions by Pina Bausch and performed in a dozen repertoire pieces including 250 performances of “Nelken,” 300 performances of “Le Sacre du Printemps” and just as many performances of “Kontakthof” along with the 2,500 rehearsals in the Lichtburg.
Judith Kuckart comes from Schwelm, a neighboring town near Wuppertal. She experienced Pina Bausch’s work from an early age, studied in Essen with Hans Züllig, with whom Pina Bausch had also studied, and then worked with Johann Kresnik before founding her own company, the Skoronel dance theater in Berlin. She became a successful director and author, most recently publishing “Die Welt zwischen den Nachrichten” (“The World Between the News”) in 2024, the same year she was first given the opportunity to use the Lichtburg for her dance piece “Von Wandermenschen und Sofamenschen.” The collaboration between Judith Kuckart and Urs Kaufmann takes us to this legendary place at night. In the rain. The overhead railway shakes the steel. The passengers look sad and tired, as they did in Pina Bausch’s day. A roller shutter. Let’s go in.