The Pain is Visible: Presence in Pain in the Aesthetics of Pina Bausch and in Buddhist Teachings
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My chapter engages with the aesthetic perception of the contemporary choreographer Pina Bausch and with the way she expresses pain in her works. My analysis of Bausch’s works is based on the Buddhist concept of suffering. When Pina Bausch (1940-2009) began creating in the 1970s in Germany, she evoked mixed reviews due to her intensity and originality. Bausch deals with aspects of human suffering. Using her unique movement language and other rhetorical means at her disposal, Bausch accurately weaves an impressive artistic text that has more segmentation than completeness, more confrontation than reconciliation, and more questions than solutions. ‘Dukkha’ (Pali), translated as ‘Suffering’ or ‘Dis-ease’ is one of the laws of existence according to Buddhist teachings. Dukkha is not only attributed to an acute condition of mental or physical pain, but also to a daily sense of inadequacy that arises when we don’t get what we want. In his meditation, the Buddha found a way out of suffering, and concluded that suffering may be reduced through sincere observation of it. I suggest that the works of Pina Bausch enable a direct accessibility to the human experience and enable a similar experience to the Buddhist practice. I argue that both the spectator in Bausch’s works and the Buddhist disciple—have that accessibility to the inmost essence of reality. By that indwelling in that concrete reality, both can become less miserable.