Pina Bausch

Pina Bausch, born in 1940, German dancer, choreographer, and actor, and director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal, a dance theater in Wuppertal, Germany. Born Philippine Bausch in Solingen, Germany, she was trained as a dancer in nearby Essen. She performed with the New American Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera House Ballet in New York City before founding Tanztheater Wuppertal in 1973.

Bausch has become known as a champion of modern dance, moving outside traditional ballet to express relationships between women and men through an expanded and experimental body language. She has accentuated the reality of her works by using elements such as mud, dead leaves, and water. Her productions include Im Wind der Zeit (In the Wind of Time, 1969), Iphigenie auf Tauris (Iphigenie at Tauris, 1974), Orpheus und Eurydike (Orpheus and Eurydice, 1975), Die Sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins, 1976), and Der Fensterputzer (The Window Washer, 1997), an eclectic vision of Hong Kong as seen through the eyes of the title character. Bausch has also acted in motion pictures, including E la nave va (And the Ship Sails On, 1984) by Italian director Federico Fellini.