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They are Brazilian dancers with very similar stories. Both had they passport stamped years ago, to study dance abroad and are now part of renowned international companies. The professional path of Ruth Amarante and Patricia Hoffbauer would be identical if there weren´t an ocean between them: Ruth chose Pina Bausch’s dance-theater and is a member of Tanztheater Wuppertal, in Germany, while Patrícia is part of Yvonne Rainer’s company, in the USA.

Both are in Brazil, enjoying their vacations – afterall, it is winter in the northern hemisphere – and spending time with their families, but they didn´t stay completely away from dance: they took the opportunity to get closer to Brazilian artists. Ruth taught a workshop in Escola Angel Vianna about the technique used by Pina in the company and participated in an informal chat, open to the public at Centro Coreográfico do Rio. Patrícia was the main organizer of the event in tribute to Yvonne Rainer, in São Paulo, and of the smaller version of the same program in Rio de Janeiro (read the interview with Yvonne for idança.

With Ruth and Patrícia in town,idança took the chance to talk to them about the years they spent abroad, cultural differences and the experience of dancing with two of the greatest names of international dance history. Each in her own style, both on stage and in life.

“Pina was always very demanding, but also kind and affectionate”

“Pina’s death was very recent, we´re still grieving”, said Ruth, still very emotional, during an informal debate in the end of July at Centro Coreográfico do Rio. The emotion and sadness were understandable, it has been 19 years since she arrived in Wuppertal to study dance soon after graduating from medical school. “During my graduation I started dancing again. I was searching for something that would surprise me when I got to know Pina’s work. I decided to look it up. I received my diploma and travelled soon after”, she remembers. Ruth auditioned for the Folkwang school, in Essen, and was accepted. After three years there, she was already a member of the company.

Ruth Amarante / Foto: Isabella Motta

After the dream was fulfilled, she was faced with the daily difficulties, usual to any work. Mixing 20 people from many different cultures, the relationships in the company were not easy. “We spent eight hours a day working in a closed room, in a city where it rains a lot, it´s not easy… We became a family, a family chosen by Pina. I spent half my life seeing Pina everyday, eight hours a day”, says Ruth, mother of nine month old Kalu.

Ruth said work with Pina was exhausting and always seeking perfection. The choreographer’s creative process was based on a game of questions. She proposed a word – ‘water’, for instance – and the dancers had to create upon questions Pina asked. This exercise lasted about 1h30 everyday. “There were hundreds of questions during the whole creation. It is a prolonged process that could last for months… We spent months living with those questions, it was very wearisome. I have notebooks full of questions”, Ruth reveals. “Pina really liked Brazil, that’s why she liked to start the game with the word ‘saudade’” (which means to miss something or someone).

Even with all the technical rigidity and professionalism, Ruth describes Pina as a very kind and affectionate person. That explains the long time many dancers spent in the company, which is the case of the Brazilian dancer, currently one of the oldest members in the group. According to her, the choreographer was very observant and liked to follow each dancer’s work development. “She related in different way with each one, always very demanding, but kind. She had assistants, but creation was always hers and she didn´t take many suggestions”, she says.

The search for perfection was not restricted to the exhausting repetition of movements, it also involved the dancer’s looks. The long hair of the female dancers was not just a coincidence: Pina thought long hair expanded movement, besides being a very feminine characteristic. “She didn´t forbid anyone to cut it, but she complained when someone changed their style”, Ruth reveals, laughing. “There is a lot of loyalty for Pina, a lot of joy working for her”.

With the choreographer’s death, there have been speculations about the end of the company, but no official word yet – the presentations in Brazil have been confirmed. Ruth talks little about the subject: “One of her sons works in the company and it´s up to him. But he seems to want to continue. Pina and her Tanztheater Wuppertal brought a revolution to dance-making in the 60’s, introducing emotion and theater elements, such as speech, in her shows. “Dance-theater is not a technique, you can´t learn, it happens on the stage. We don´t have any theater training, we are dancers, we had dance classes. In the 30 years of the company only one actress joined the group. The result is theatrical, but we perform and speak as dancers”.

From Graciela Figueroa to Yvonne Rainer

In the 1960’s, while Pina Bausch revolutionized modern dance in Germany, Yvonne Rainer also invented a new form of expression in the USA. Instead of Pina’s emotion and theatricality, dry and simple movements. And this ended up being the path followed by Patrícia Haffbauer, although her encounter with Yvonne happened almost by chance, after the ‘explosion’ of the Judson Dance Theater. Actually, the choreographer crossed ways with Patrícia’s husband in the end of the 90’s. They met at the University and one day Yvonne decided to watch the work of the student and his wife at the same Judson Church where she and other important names transformed dance history in the 60’s. This episode took place in 1999 and Yvonne was delighted with the way the Brazilian touched her own body. “When she told me that I was touched”, remembers Patrícia.

Patrícia Hoffbauer / Foto: Isabella Motta

A few years afterwards, Yvonne created her company, choosing to invite performers from different backgrounds and even a non-dancer. The idea was that the group would get together only to rehearse and the present old works, so they could all keep their previous projects. Patrícia joined the company in 2006, soon after giving birth to her second daughter, when she was already thinking about stopping to dance. “I have a great respect for Yvonne, her mind is very fertile, she is a very especial person. The opportunity to be able to keep dancing by her side was very stimulating”.

Until the encounter with Yvonne, Patrícia’s path towards dance was long. Her mother was a classic ballet dancer in São Paulo and placed her daughter in ballet class at the age of 8. “I had classes with Tatiana Leskova, but I didn´t like it, I wasn´t good at it. But it was in the academy that I met Angel and Klauss Vianna, they had just opened their first school and when I was about 15 I went there”, she tells. Two years after that, she joined Teatro do Movimento, directed by Angel and Klauss Vianna, in Rio de Janeiro, and later Grupo Coringa, directed by Uruguayan choreographer Graciela Figueroa. “At that time, Graciela already worked in an interdisciplinary way, using release technique, anatomy ideas, revolutionary ballet. Among the 10 members of the group, I was the youngest. In Coringa we lived a very hippie moment, the group was as democratic as can be, it preached the idea that the body was freedom. We didn´t quite know what all that was, whether or not it would become something big. Graciela was revolutionary, tolerant of all differences. She wanted to demystify dance, which was somehow the same proposal as Judson Church. She created simple choreographies that anyone could dance. She believed in the ability of the ordinary body. At the same time, she used very political lyrics. She was the one who brought an awareness of the Americas to Brazilian dance.

Ballet was already part of the past and the work with Graciela sparked a desire to learn more, to dedicate herself to dance further. That´s when, in the beginning of the 80’s she travelled to New York City to understand “where it all came from”, the things Graciela proposed in her work. At the time, she took a semester off college, where she studied Literature. She lives there to this day. “I remember Graciela wrote the name of some people I should look up in New York in a paper napkin! And I kept the napkin!”, remembers Patrícia.

'The Architecture of Seeing' / Foto divulgação

Nowadays, besides being a dancer in Yvonne Rainer’s company and mother to two little girls – 9 year old Julieta and 4 year old Graciela -, Patrícia also teaches Body in cultural landscapes (a course created by her), in which she explores the use of the body as entertainment. She thinks about returning to Brazil, but that´s a long-term plan. Even with life established in one of the most culturally ebullient cities in the world, the dancer makes a point to say that it is not easy living of art in the USA, as many may think, and the struggle for financing is equal or bigger than in Brazil. “There is little money available and there are many independent artists struggling to survive. Actually, very few artists live exclusively of dance in the USA. This is a reflex of a distancing policy of cultural production as a whole, leaving artists at the mercy of government financing.”

Speaking of the current dance production in the USA, Patrícia reminds the importance of the legacy of Merce Cunningham and Pina Bausch, two great losses for the art world in 2009. “Cunningham promoted a separation between dance and narrative. He made dance without the imprisonment of technique, something everybody at Judson did. It was dance closer to reality. He was a genius, it was a gift being able to see him dance. Pina broke the sacred aura in dance and created the presence of the theatrical performer. Both brought great transformations and their loss is very sad”.