Dancing dreams

Pina Bausch, a leading German modern dance choreographer, died in 2009, during the completion of a documentary report on her teaching style for young people, Tanztraume (Dancing Dreams).

Then aged 69, she did see the class of more than 30 non-professional teenagers complete their eight-month course of Saturday morning dance classes and perform her "Kontakhof", first staged in 1978, in a German theatre.

An ideal exercise for young beginners, the lightly comic dance revue shows teenagers exploring their own personalities, needs and sensual bodies through a sequence of varying dance styles. The documentary focuses on and follows the learning steps of a handful of youngsters who were likely lead roles in the "graduation" performances.

The true stars are Bausch's two middle-aged dance mistresses, visibly loving their work as Bausch's disciples and the apprentices' dance teachers and life counsellors. Bausch herself, a gaunt poker-faced heavy smoker with an imperial stride and smile, only appears in the rehearsal room occasionally, to assess the project's progress and make casting choices. As with documentaries showcasing similar busy cultural icons (Anna Wintour, YSL, etc), the dedicated assistants, their masters' apostles, are the true cultural heroes.

The students are an interesting bunch, some from first or second-generation Germans (from the former Yugoslavia and its Romany migrants), while other dance-curious youngsters sport gelled hairstyles, male earrings and black faces. Overall, they present an almost incredibly happy image of well-adjusted, ethnically-diverse German urban teens, forming a friendly team in which the only foreign influence is the occasional usage of "international" English and French words for limbs and steps.

Although the youngsters' interviews include moments of grief, shyness and despair, it's primarily a self-effacing record of an aspect of Bausch's work. No more, no less, and therefore disappointing. Although a study of dance shouldn't look so pedestrian, it does clearly illustrate Pausch's belief in using modern dance to liberate a teenager's self-esteem.