(Mitchell’s piece ran in the Guardian, 6/6.)
I must have seen Café Müller in the 80s and it was the most lyrical, painful and beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I just sat there and cried. I was amazed that someone could move like Pina Bausch did, imagine like that. It's set in a cafe after it's closed and it's about love and despair; there's an atmosphere of abandonment, it's late at night, they shouldn't be there. People are very unhappy in love, they can't quite find a place to meet. They're lonely and sad and everything's very impossible. It has a series of different duets and solos between men and women and there's an amazing moment when a woman keeps trying to jump into a man's arms and he keeps dropping her again and again. Bausch seemed to capture in the movement that strange hinterland that sometimes exists between men and women when they can't quite get across to each other, because the differences just overwhelm.
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