Pina Bausch is dead

Out of sequence for a change. In a sense, it’s part of the expected loss. But it remains a loss. Not because of the memories and how she’d been a fixture for more than fifteen years. It’s a personal loss because of what would have been and won’t be. Because she died just when I had found a new interest after a few so-so years. At some point I almost stopped going, because it seemed too much of the same, and because there was such a high demand for tickets that I felt I should let someone else go. But the last few shows shaked me out of that line of thought, and that predictability was gone. Maybe familiarity had lulled me into not paying attention enough, anyway Sweet Mambo had emphatically put a stop to that. Too bad it turned out to be her last, on the other hand she left on top as far as I’m concerned.

In small understated ways, she kept giving me reasons to come back for more even when I wasn’t all that much into that particular show, and there have been many times when she brought me more than that, especially most recently. Maybe getting older helped me get a glimpse of the stuff left unshown. My fondest memory over these years remains something she left out, but that was nonetheless very much there for me. It’s definitely not a misunderstanding because I don’t pretend to understand. What was most precious to me then and is now even more so — for reasons totally unrelated to her passing — may very well be something she loathed. No way to know by now, and it never was about that because the point is she brought forth something I care about, and I took that as a way to take what she had done and claim it. Not as in claiming credit, but as acknowledging that some small part of it became a part of me, of who I would be from then on. Not every time, but often enough, and it did add up.

Her death sucks. Not because of the rich yesterdays, but because of the poorer tomorrows.