Contemporary Dance Class Takes Pina Bausch Work Beyond the Classroom
Students enrolled in Ekaterina Zharinova’s DRA 014: Introduction to Contemporary Dance recently took “The Nelken Line,” a classic work by the late dance pioneer Pina Bausch, to campus.
The Pina Bausch Foundation has invited dancers and dance lovers across the world to take part in ”The Nelken Line.” Bausch choreographed “Nelken”—which means “carnations” in English—in 1982. It’s the piece with hundreds of pink carnations scattered across the stage, where at one point, the dancers walk in a single-file line, performing the same four distinct gestures over and over. For Bausch, each of the gestures represented one of the four seasons.
The UC Davis students’ performance of the piece was videoed by Zharinova and submitted to the Bausch Foundation which posted the performance on their video page. On the Vimeo page, the performance is titled “A Regular Day in Davis,” and so named by Zharinova’s son, Mikhail, who after viewing the video remarked, ”Oh, fine! This is just a regular day in Davis…”