All language subtitles for Baila Pina

10 years after Pina Bausch's death,

two of her earliest works are being
passed on to new ensembles.

Under the direction of former dancers
from Pina's ensemble.

2019 "Iphigenie auf Tauris" with the ballet
ensemble of the Semperoper Dresden, Germany

2020 "Le Sacre du Printemps" with dancers

from 14 African countries
at the École des Sables, Senegal

Clé. You know what I told you before?

I told you, look...
You do this.

You pray.

And pray. And pray.

Lift your arm. Lift it.

Lift your arm.

Lift it.

Lift it and go.

And... go.

And... go.

Don't be afraid to go for it.

You're too...
Look, you're too careful.

You take care too much.

You see what I mean?
You do this and... You take care.

Instead of...

Go. And...

And...

And...

And...

Don't be scared. Go on.

And contract, contract,
contract, contract.

Wait.

It's a difficult start.

Malou, it's 4 years ago.

For me it's 40 years ago.

It's here.

There is this specific part
in the second act

where Malou is opening everything
to the sky.

This one here.

You see, she looks up, completely up.

Since Pina is not there, you try so much
to stick to information

that you got from the dancers
that learned the role.

Or from what you remember somehow.

It's making more rich my knowledge.

Which I'm hungry for at the moment,
especially before going to Dresden.

To have the maximum information
that I can have.

Be careful, because I remember here...

I think she goes down on her knee,
but not yet.

Does she go down with the music?
- No.

Before?

I love this piece so much,
I want it to continue.

And to be as much as possible
a good tool

to keep this piece going.

Because it's too precious
to not be seen.

Good morning, everyone.

It's great that we're all already here.

Fantastic we are here.

We are also excited,
we are also nervous.

But we want to go through,
so let's see how we go.

Just about the timetable...

It will be always training
at 9 o'clock,

till 10 o'clock.

15 minutes break.

And we start the first rehearsal,
until 1:30.

All together here in the morning.

And in the afternoon
we are going to split,

and we start at 3:30
till 6 o'clock. OK?

Go over.

This one keeps going
and this one joins it.

And you feel cuddly at the end.
Cozy and cuddly.

And we are round.

Round.

Round. In here a space.

Breathe.

Long fingers, long hands.

This one over. Yeah.

And now back.

And... go.

And now swing, swing.

Come up from here,
the feet go just up like this.

And now they lead...

to a third arabesque actually.

That's a comfortable Pina Bausch position.

Stand up.

This is third arabesque.

And with Pina
there is some distance between the arms.

We are going this way.

Reaching far out.

I have to see one at a time.

Don't be frightened of me.

OK.

I can be very strict,
but I'm only trying to help you, yeah?

I have to, yeah?

So you also have to sing
when you're dancing.

You like it?

Sing, sing with your bodies.

For a dancer, it's one of the most
wonderful things you could ever dance.

It's unforgettable.

You shouldn't be able to think
while you're doing it.

You just get into it.

And this death
and this ritual and this pulse

just takes you there.

We are all sweating.
We are all feeling the same fear.

It's my turn to go to...
with the dress.

Will it be me, the next one?

We all go as ourselves with the dress
until the last person goes.

And then you hear...

Then all the hairs start
to stand up on your body.

And then you know that's it.

You have no chance to escape.

Your hip is leading you
and you're just keep looking that way.

This...

And if you keep looking
over your shoulder,

it's making you turn.

You don't need to think of
going for the turn.

Once more.

You can all come here.

You're here.
You look at the edge of the stage.

And you go down. Down.

Right away your head is down to the left.

Right away.

You're there right away.

And now the contraction.
Look at me, Tom!

It's as if you were like this.

It's very animal.

"Sacre" is a trip.

You prepare yourself the best.

You know, it's going so fast
that you will not do it perfect.

But Pina kept saying to us,
"But the point is not that.

It's that you're trying."”

She liked perfection,
there is no doubt.

But I think she needed,
in every step we did, that you go for...

beyond the control.

So things were kept alive.

Yes, OK. Nice.

I want to do it again.

This time you stay in the air.

OK?

When I say, "You try to stay there,"

it's really your imagination
that will get you a bit higher.

You'll see.

Once more.

So the table is near the chair.
Yeah, that's going to be good.

She's sitting here,

and then here she's collapsing.

I mean, it's not the table
so it's not going to move like this.

But she's really like...

Really here, but...

I will show you.

She's collapsing, but right away
she takes herself back.

She's not...

Even if she makes a little...

moment on the table,

she's not... like this.

She's here and she keeps this...

Like, she's down,
but she keeps the body up somehow.

And then from here she's doing this one.

Up...

To run...

To go in the grand plié.

Grand plié.

She closes herself.

She's running until she is arriving
at these two chairs.

And then she's going
in between those two invisible persons.

But they are very special persons
for her here, you know...

Maybe you can think
about the parents,

that they are not there anymore.

Anyway...

And then she collects herself back here

to go back to the table
and right away she touches the table.

When you're here...

So you did this...

We really... Yeah.

You watch out, huh?

You are here. It's really like...

We need to feel you in the table.

Yes.

Pina was saying
to her dancers not a lot.

A few words, and then you knew.

Sometimes I'm like,
I'm talking too much.

Then I go to my body,
because it's easier.

It's almost easier for me
to show, to show, to show, to show.

You see her back? Straight.

You barely understand
how she can still stand somehow.

This is how I feel
when Malou is doing this.

Again, she's doing the movement full,
but so broken somehow.

If you see Malou,
if you see me somehow,

all those dancers have
a very different approach to the role.

Pina gave a role to people
that had nothing physically in common.

But from what I know
about all those performers,

they have their strong interpretation
of this part of Iphigenia.

What is Iphigenia inside yourself.

How you start to transmit is like...

We are just going through movements.

Because the movements themselves
are carrying already the meaning

of what is happening.

Many people like to talk about the plot,

about the theme, and so on.

An explanation for every movement.

Here we don't have an explanation
for every movement,

or if we had it, it died with Pina.

So we just do movements all the time.

It's, like, actually we are teaching them
sometimes only letters.

Little letters. Letters, letters.

And sometimes we are teaching them
how to do the letter.

You know? It's going like this.

And now this is like this.

And then you have the A.

And then let's teach you
the next one like this.

And now put it together.

And that's what we are doing.

And in that work
it's like teaching another language.

Step, step. Down.

Two. Look, look.

Down. Leg. Up, down.

Five, six, seven...

Side, side, front, back...

Feel each other.

Three, four.

Turn. Step, step.

Arms.

Drop, two, three, stop.

Down, down and four.

Up, come back, three, four.

Down, two, three, four.

Down. Step, step, step.

Down, two. Look, look, turn.

One, two... Get ready for the run.

Turn. One, two, three.
Running.

If there's one thing I would hate,
it would be to make a copy.

No way. I don't want
for any piece of Pina to be a copy.

I need to keep this alive.

So if I copy only and I copy all,

I think we lose.

We lose the...

I will say we will not lose the material.

The work of Pina.

Because the pieces are so well done

it is still something
you can show in a theater.

But we will lose the essence.

And we will lose also the encounter.
A real encounter.

I've watched the video several times
on my phone and my computer,

but this is the first time I've seen it
with the group energy.

It was different.

I can see the movements
are much more precise and clear.

But each of the dancers
had their own style.

They were moving their own way.

At the moment we're learning the moves.

But maybe I should find
my own way to do it

and integrate the choreography,
so I'm keeping my style.

I'd like to know...

Because you're from different cultures.

I'd like to know what your mind-set is
when you're on this stage.

Is it of the dancer or the character?

I'd like to know what happens in you
when you're on this stage.

I want to relate it to us,
who are Africans

and know very much
about ritual and things,

in order to understand better
and to find a balance.

With our African roots and culture,
if we let ourselves go too far,

things could happen.
Trances. Weird things...

So I want to know...

Right.

If I knew on the day
that I had to dance the solo at the end,

my whole day was like,
"Keep your energy low-flame, Jo."

Your whole day is like,
you know you have to dance it.

You know you have to get yourself
to that moment

where at the end
you don't know how you can get up

to take the applause at the end sometimes.

I think most of us haven't been
to ballet school or anything.

And African dance techniques
are very different

from what we saw in the piece.

Since you have danced the piece
and you know it very well,

with the potential that we have,
do you really think that...

Can we really be...

Because we don't have
the technical abilities.

But when you see us,

do you expect to be satisfied?

Or do you expect
to be reasonably confident

in the work we're doing?

I'm not coming from classical.

In the company there were dancers who were
not coming from any training like this.

So it is possible.

OK, we are just falling...

And by falling I'm moving.

You guys catch this quite fast.

Classical dancers don't catch this fast.

They don't fall. They're controlling
all the time, everything.

So if you teach them that,
they will do this...

They will want
to pack everything with their brain.

"I can do this. Of course.”

No, no. Fall, fall.

It takes time, a lot of time.

And we are falling a lot in this piece.

Pina's style has a lot to do
with going somewhere.

OK? Don't be too speedy.

Yeah, it's still...

I shouldn't tell you,
because you will be quick.

Quick, for sure,
and quicker than me, for sure, too.

When you're here...

Dominique said something.
I'm trying to remember what he said.

He said to Orest...

They were working on a part
where also Orest is so much in pain.

He has this pain, and I think
it relates also to Iphigenia.

They have this pain but they keep
their dignity all the time.

Yes.

Yes. But it's coming.

For me, Pina Bausch's work is very new
for me to learn the vocabulary.

Her works. Her movements.

I still need a bit more time
to digest all the information.

I feel like I'm starting learning,

like dancing for the first time.

Like I'm starting learning how to walk.

Because also we're trained
in classical ballet

to present myself,

to be more elegant like this.

But in Pina's work
I don't need much really.

I really have to be myself.

Being truthful, what it is.

And it's not that easy, actually.

That you have this position.

You have the...
- I'm not out.

You have the tendency, all of you,
to be already sort of like this.

I try to be as much as I can like this.

And now the first thing I know
is I just give up the...

And let my elbow go there.

And then I put the rest of the body.

The first thing that should happen is
actually the giving up of Orest.

And your reaction...
- Before I start?

Yes.

If you start too soon
it gets a little bit confusing.

From this, he is the first one
in the silence to start this

and then you put him down here.

And...

So you have this, here,

there, and actually
this would be too flat.

He should end here.

Like that somehow.

That's better.

He's going to fall!

Yeah, I can't walk away.

I am probably
more than anything competitive.

That's something
that's gotten me to where I am now.

It's something that...

When I see somebody,
especially in classical parts...

So when I watch somebody do
Don Quixote,

and I need to do Don Quixote,

all I can think about
is wanting to do it better.

And that's not necessarily
the most positive way of working.

That's something
that's very innately who I am.

I watch a video and,
"Oh, well, his leg was this high,

so I'm gonna do it this high."”

In classical ballet
we all want to be perfect.

And being imperfect here is perfect.

So that's very, very different.

Usually we try so hard to erase
everything that's not perfect about us

and to hide it.

And here it's OK.

Big step.

Step, step, up.

In the beginning
you're not letting it happen.

You always want to be
in control of your body,

but here it's just happening on its own.

Yeah? Just relax.

You will be so tired, believe me,
because this is nearly the end.

Let go. You have so much energy,
but here just let go.

My name is Biachi Gloria Ugwarelojo.

I'm from Nigeria.

I lived all my life in Lagos City.

Yes, I did a lot of street dancing,

and then I moved into African.

So it's a lot of turnaround for me.

And I think...
because I am really strong

and they tell me all the time,

"Gloria, you have to breathe
and make it soft.

You have to be really soft.

I know you're strong.
I know you feel strong.

But sometimes you need to feel."

And up and...

Elbows. Down.

I watched the video
way before the audition.

The dancer I worked with
always mentioned Pina Bausch.

I watched the video and was in awe.

The mind of that woman,
imagining those moves,

that music...

And all the dancers are really present.

Not just in their bodies.
You can tell they are really present.

That always motivated me to dance.

And perhaps someday
to be able to do something similar.

I always thought:
Someday I will be able to dance

without worrying about how it looks.

Without worrying if people will like it.

To feel it and be able to express it.

To tell a real story.

And one and down.

Duck, duck, duck.

And one, up. Look.

And up, better.

In the first week
I accumulated a lot of things.

All I did was take, take, take,
even though...

I get angry when I miss things.

I know it's OK,
but I can't help getting angry.

Because, for me, I have to...

I have to confirm something.

They gave me this chance.

And then I left my family
in my country.

It's the first time I've traveled
for such a long time.

I'm away from my son.

That's hard.

When I work, I think,

"OK, you've left him,
but it can't be for nothing."

Together, fly!

Down. Over, one, two.

Up. Duck, duck, duck.

Turn.

And down.

And down.

This moment, you don't drop it.

You insist to try to keep going.

You fall, you pull yourself together.

If you do the jump like this,
the next one you put yourself here.

OK?

OK, you don't drop it.

And don't blame yourself.

Using it in a very nice way is like,
"The next one I'll do it.

I want to try the next one."

My name is Tom Jules Sarnie.

I'm from Togo.

My base is traditional dance.

I've traveled to African countries
to learn traditional dances.

I went to the villages

and talked with people to know
where these dances come from.

The dance of fire.
The dance of the Earth god.

My way of doing things
in a natural way

is to really feel them
and be able to do them well.

I think for me
that's the best way to do things.

When you feel what you're doing,
you can put your personality inside.

Instead of just copying something
that comes from Jorge

and just reproducing it quickly.

So I told him that.
I said to him, "There's no problem.

I understand
that we don't have much time.

So I accept to work twice as hard.”

You have to make up your mind now.

Do we want to see more
of the arm or the shoulder?

What's better for her?
- Because we can't have both.

We won't have any straps.

I understand.

Wait.

Oh my God, it's hard.

Let's remove this.

Did you try the movement?
For you it was OK?

Did you try the leg also?

I met Pina in New York.

It was in November...

I think 1970.

In Paul Sanasardo's studio.

Paul told us,

"Kids, come. You're going to meet
the most incredible artist

you've ever met in the world."

I was still very young.

And Pina entered.

It was November
and it was very cold in New York.

And she came to us,
to Paul's studio.

And she said, "Hello. Hello."

She was...

This is the fantastic artist?
Who is this woman?

It was a special moment for me.

And from this point on...

we were like sisters.

Or best friends.
That was so great.

Because I felt...

Pina loves me as I am.

Pina, she had a body...

Her arms were fantastic.

I couldn't move like that.

I'm like...

My body is like...

like this... like a man's body.

And then Pina told us,

"I will be a choreographer in Wuppertal.

And I would love...

I would love that you come with us
to Wuppertal.”

And then... I don't want to
say anything wrong...

Pina wanted to stage "Iphigenia”.

And this was for my life...

and I have worked with a lot of
choreographers, with many people.

And "Iphigenia" was...

Every movement,

every single movement was...

real.

It was real.

You say something.

Your dream.

It was...

I have my problem always, you know?

The thing is...

What I told you this morning.

The thing is, it's boring.
I feel it's boring

and we... you have to make it's not boring.

So, if you stay two hours like this

and you wait for the music to do this...

I think you have to feel...
I don't want to get you crazy.

And you work a lot with Clé
so I don't want to make you crazy.

What you did is beautiful.
It's not that.

But now it's yours

and you can do with it
f***ing what you want.

So it means you go
and if you're early it's OK.

But then take the time for this one.

Or for this one.

But... bring the music.

Otherwise it becomes...

And that's all.

You speak with the movement.
You know what I mean?

And...

You speak...

You see, I feel you go...

I don't feel that you...

You go, you speak...

Use your legs.

Where is the contraction?

Drop your head.

OK.

And go. Use your legs. Come, come.

Drop, drop. Yes.

Finish your plié. You are not finished.

If you're not finished, you cannot stay.

This doesn't look good.
It doesn't look good.

Don't make the tension in your arm.

Make the tension here.

So we don't see your arm.
We see that you think.

You are thinking about,

"I had a dream,
a very strange dream, last night."

Think about your dream.
Think about your dream.

Think about it. It never stops.

And...

Breathe.

And...

Kiss...

It has nothing to do
with classic or contemporary.

It is about,
who are you as a human being?

As an artist?

Who are you?

What can you tell with your
life experience, all your technique...

I have danced Iphigenia
for such a long time.

I had my first child,
my second child

and my third child.

And I was still dancing.

I danced Iphigenia
till I was 50 years old.

With a completely different feeling.

Because your whole
life experience changes.

You can't just imitate.

You can only be who you are.

And that is the special thing
about Pina...

Because she trusted me.

My feelings. My time...

As a mother.
My life. The suffering.

All what we know about life.

Heels together when you come over.

Lift up to come over.

Yes. Now nice arms to go over.

Nice round back here.
Yes, very nice.

Now touch...

And really feel.

And you can go further sometimes.

You can go all the way over to there.

And my head follows?

You can go with your head.

Then you can put this one here
and go with the other one.

But you...

Feel the earth.

With the whole hand.

You know? Get your hand dirty.

Put some weight onto it.

Come over here.

Look, if I'm going through the sand,
my whole hand is...

Yes, so it's the same up there.

I am an original company dancer,
member from 1973.

Pina and I met up
in Covent Garden in England.

I had actually given up
the idea of being a dancer,

because I was so tired
of being told

I was two kilos too fat, too heavy.

Not looking like the others.

She asked me
to come to Wuppertal as a soloist.

And she didn't mind all my kilos,

because she liked the person I was.

We were a very
strange-looking lot of people.

Some were thin, some were fat.

Tall, small.

We were just people there for Pina.

I know in "Sacre" there's a little girl.

She runs up the back.

She turns around

and she just looks.

This was one of my friends, Vivienne.

She unfortunately died
nine years ago.

But I know all these people,

because it was so intimate, the work.

I will always see Vivienne running.

I like the original people.

I like to keep them alive.

Better. And...

Fall!

Try to suspend this.

Breathe.

Big jump.

And chest.

And...

Big.

Breathe. Now breathe, and...

Plié, plié!

Big, big!

One. One. One. Fall.

Down and up.

You have to put your arm up.

And go, slowly come.

Come down, down. Arm down.

Fall. And...

You're a big woman.

Don't be afraid to be big. It's beautiful.

You are beautiful.

Don't make yourself small.
You are beautiful.

So if you start to go like this
and to do...

You did like this.
You are too far from the chair.

I'm really close.

Really get close.

And when you go out of the chair...

Go!

Like who you are.

I always heard, you're not going to make
it to the company, because I'm too tall.

I'll be too tall for the group.

I'll be too tall to find a partner,
a male partner.

It was always hard
and sometimes I wanted to quit also.

But I'm very happy here.

They really appreciate how I am
and they ask me to dance even taller.

Even Clémentine...

Even in the audition
I still remember she was telling me,

don't even lose one millimeter
of what I have.

It's very easy for me
to read Sang in this sense,

because I experienced that.

I know how you try to make yourself small.

I was in this ballet world,
which was very tough on me,

because I didn't have really
the technique for it.

And also I didn't have the physique.

I was too tall. I was too large.

I was... I was a woman, you know...

And it was not a nice moment.

It was very hard somehow,

because people told me
I would never be a dancer.

So when you are 15, you don't understand
why they tell you this.

And for...

I have to say, when I arrived in Germany,
I was first in the dance school.

In the school, I watched so many
performances from Pinas Tanztheater.

And there I saw huge ladies dancing.

And I said to myself,
"Ah, it's possible. You can explode."

And also at that time
Malou was my teacher.

And one day she came to me
very strongly.

She said,

"Why are you not dancing big?"

You know, like...

And I said to her,
"Yeah, I don't know."

She said,
"You need to stop that and just do it.

Your body's like this, use it."

When I was little, I liked to dance.

I moved, I had to dance.

And when I was eight,
I wanted to do gymnastics.

I started to learn the movements for
flexibility, rotations and other things.

Later I wanted to dance.

When I turned 15,

my mother started to be scared,
because I was doing things...

I was bending myself,
around my head, my neck.

I was bending, doing things.

My mother was scared
I wouldn't be able to have a child.

So I couldn't do it anymore.

She made me stop dancing completely.

It has to be said
that in Africa female dancers

are treated as -
please excuse the term - prostitutes.

People say right away, "You sleep
with the choreographer to get something.

You give yourself.
You can't get married."

There are a lot of
ulterior motives around it.

So my mother
never accepted that I dance.

Everybody can be very individual here.

Try and feel it.

It's all about
being honest with your feelings.

There's one moment where you stand and...

You... No, you don't want to.

You start to breathe
and then that's why you start to run.

Underneath the movement is this breath
and a yearning to go on and live.

One of you is going to die.

And it can be anyone of you.

You don't know yet
who's going to be chosen.

So you are all victims.

My understanding
about this piece, it's...

It's all about a feminine world.

It's giving and wanting to be taken.

It's...

I think it's something so personal.

From where I come from
to where I am now.

People not believing in me.

You don't find so many females
coming out to work like this.

So I feel strong for every girl
who is here today.

There are too many things.
You need to marry.

You need to start a family.
You need to work.

You need to take care
of people behind you.

And you choose to dance. And...

And not just dance.

You choose to... to be yourself,

to express yourself,
to talk about you with this thing.

And then when you are 25,
your family is so worried.

They want you to get married.

So should it be marriage
and no career anymore?

That's the idea.

So into that kind of mood...

My whole journey through dance
started, for a man, very young.

I was three
when I found that I loved dance.

That was pretty much all I wanted to do.

I would put the cassette tape in
and dance around the house,

in my mom's bedroom,
or my parents' bedroom.

I was teased a lot
as a kid growing up in America.

And dancing in America,

you're teased a lot.

It was probably the biggest part
of my childhood, being teased.

It was an everyday thing.

And I had to learn how to defend myself
in many different ways.

I think I probably would have stopped
if I hadn't had the support of my father.

Because having that man saying...

When all the other men around me
were saying,

"You're gay, you're this, you're that,
because you're a dancer,"

and getting teased for it,

having my father,
and the man in my life,

confirm that it's OK to do
what I wanted to do, no matter what,

was really, really, important for me.

When I saw the video for the first time,

I asked myself several questions.

For me, Westerners don't know
the meaning of sacrifice.

I was born because of a sacrifice.

Where I come from,
we know the value of sacrifice.

Sacrifice is in our lives every day.

After seeing the piece I was wondering,

"Wow. I don't know
what Pina told these dancers

to sacrifice themselves
to such an extent."

It's very strong.

In every part, you can feel
that they want to go to the extreme.

I said to myself, "Maybe Pina
had to make a sacrifice.”

Because you have to make a sacrifice
at a certain point for the dance.

We need to do this all the time.

No, all the time you don't want to do it.

Of course, we need now to do it

and we will do it tomorrow hopefully
with the men maybe.

We do sections, but every day
we would like to have the girls

so that we can be further than the men,

because the men are slow.

It's better without the men.

There are a lot of corrections.

As soon as we get into a formation,
it's like you have no idea

that you have to be aware of the people
beside you, in front of you,

that you always have to be in this whole.

So that's why we have
to concentrate this week,

always where our feet are
and where we stand.

Even Luciény.

When you're running... Where is she?

Every time you run,
I don't need to see you.

I know Luciény's running because I hear...

You know, I have to be quite strict now,

because I want us to get there.

I'm not really a strict person
but I have to be.

I can be funny, but I can be
the worst person you will want to know.

Thank you very much.

First of all, concerning the balance...

Since the singers are way up there...

In the first part at the "Stubenmusik"...

at "La Tempesta", bar 29...

Of course we are too loud.

We never really come back to piano.

And what we had yesterday...

We do too much...

We don't need that.
It has to jump somehow.

For me to be ready for the performance,
I need to dance next to the hole.

Because I feel when I get on stage,

all I think about
during the third act is the hole.

Even in moments where there's no way
that I could fall in the hole,

I'm scared of falling in the hole.
And especially with lights,

when you turn and you look up
and then you come down,

because of the lights, you're blind.

You don't know where the hole is really.

This is actually a very big thing
for me to get over at the moment.

There were the singers
and people watching.

It was the end of the day also.

I couldn't flow at all,
just stuck with my brain.

I was missing some parts.

I didn't stand up with the music.

At some point I was thinking
I have to stop,

because I wasn't flowing
with the piece.

When I don't flow,
if I think about all the things,

then I don't live in the moment.

Instead of working to my position,
they are out.

They are out. We do all of this...

We do all of this.

And then I come up, walk to your position,
so they are outside.

I think we need some quiet.
- Yes.

I think we need some quiet!

Everyone!

We're going to start.

All you have on the legs - kneepads,
bandages, only things you are using.

If you need to use it,
you can use it.

But don't let them just hang.

Everybody just be quiet on the side

and we'll have some quiet in the room
before we start.

It's our first run-through.
It's a big day.

I thought I hadn't felt the piece.

I followed the movements and the music,
listened to the tempo.

But we still haven't reached
the heart of the piece, its essence.

That relationship
between man and woman.

The sacrifice, the ritual.

I'm still learning
how to do the moves.

I'm still not able
to make every move.

And at the same time
you have to be a human being.

A human being that is "Luciény".

Doing the moves and really...

feeling the piece as a ritual.

Thank you for the run-through.

But what for me is missing is the piece,
the feeling of the piece.

The ritual.

How we are walking in two groups,
how everybody is being individual.

If somebody is just walking there
with no feeling,

but just wants to show himself,

it's a great pity for the rest.

I know it's hard
to do it two times in a row,

but I think it would be nice now
to do the whole thing again.

Sang?

Sang?

Sang?

There are two space things.

This one. When you are here,
the position you take is good.

Remember that with this one
you need to pull more,

because for this you were
too much again to the center.

The other day also
there is something you lost.

You had it very nicely, both of you,
and something...

Which moment?
- The first running together,

when you push him the first time.

And he stops and just this...

I think you want to make something
too much extra out of it.

Much better today.
That's the way we have to go on.

That was great.

Now we have to make an announcement
which is not very happy.

We have to make an announcement
which is not very pleasing.

The performance in Dakar
has been canceled.

The performance in Dakar
has been canceled,

because, as you might have followed,
of the virus.

It's the President of Senegal
who announced that until 5th of April

there will be no performance in Dakar.

We're sorry to make this announcement

after a day that I think
was very pleasing for all of us.

It's a pity that we have to make this
announcement after a beautiful day,

after a lot of joy
and happiness and satisfaction.

He forgot to tell you guys
that actually also Germany is canceled.

Germany is canceled too.

At the moment we don't know
about Paris and London.

But all of Europe is now canceled.

Everything. It's not just shows,
but everything is closed.

We are in danger of not getting home.

We are in danger of not getting back home.

So it's not only Dakar.

I would like to say that
in the Wolof language there is a saying,

It means, "When you have sweated

and the sweat goes into the earth,

it doesn't get lost."

So everything you've done now
will not be lost.

We don't know.
Sometimes there are things that happen.

It's very difficult,
but it may be for something even better.

And I assure you that this will continue.

You must believe in that.

If I hadn't believed,

the École des Sables wouldn't be here.

Helmut and I believed in it.

If it didn't work, we said,
"It's going to work."

So you must believe us.

You must believe all these people
who have made this.

If you don't believe, it won't work.

But it will work. You have to believe it.

It will work.

I will take all these dancers,

in my heart, back with me,

because every time you work with somebody
it's very close, it's very intense.

My son was meant to come to Dakar
to watch the premiere.

But he can't do that anymore.

My son has seen me
once or twice dancing on stage.

But I've never really done a piece.

So, for me, this is my first piece
and I would have liked him to see it.

You just think, I know that we are strong.
We are so strong.

And this is the only way
we can express ourselves, so...

It's sad.

I would love to be on stage with you.

You are beautiful.
You're so beautiful.

Attention, we are starting.

Please be silent on the sides.
Silence everyone.

Ready, Sang.

We have something
to show the world, which is...

what I know and what I believe in,
because I believe in the works.

I believe in what I have given.

I believe in what every other person
around me has given.

We need to show the world.
It's beautiful.

Different countries.
Nigeria, Ghana, Madagascar,

Kenya,

Togo, Benin,

Mali, Burkina Faso,

South Africa.

It's so interesting.
All of these countries in one space.

It can't just end like this.

We live and we learn.

And we dance.

And we move.

And we move people by doing
what we are doing.

OK. Let's go.

Enjoy yourselves.

Make the most of it.

Take a pleasure, guys, OK?