This semester the Penn State School of Theatre Contemporary theatre history students are exploring the ideas of foundational 20th Century artists and thinkers to consider theatrical time-space. To test our ideas about how performance might produce space and how space might inspire performance, Theatre 402 students will research and plan the Nelken-Line, an excerpt from foundational dance theatre choreographer Pina Bausch’s 1982 dance piece, Nelken.

By dancing part of Nelken, our class will ask: How does dance connect the past, the present, and the future? How can knowledge of historical dance theatre inform our own practices as performers, designers, and dramaturgs? How does embodied practice enhance or elevate this experience? In the simplest terms, we will walk together in a beautiful way in a public space, and see what happens.

This project participates in an international initiative to celebrate dance as an inclusive practice. Specifically, the Bausch Foundation’s Nelken-Line Project invites dance companies, community groups, schools, families, et cetera, to record and submit their own versions of the Nelken-Line. The Foundation then accepts and archives these films, a collection that will be shared publicly through the Foundation’s website and beyond.

To prepare, our Theatre History students are learning performance research skills (dramaturgy), focusing on the history and working methods of Pina Bausch’s company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, but also taking into account the theorizing of theatre space that began with Brook’s The Empty Space in 1968. Students are also learning to read and interpret historical dance criticism, as they learn to write their own critical pieces about contemporary dance.