TANZTHEATER WUPPERTAL PINA BAUSCH.

TANZTHEATER WUPPERTAL PINA BAUSCH BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC NOVEMBER 2, 4-7, 1999 REVIEWED BY MARILYN HUNT

Pina Bausch's 1995 Danzon, in its U.S. premiere, gives humorous twists to her familiar themes. A cross-dressed man in red heels does a wry little dance just of his protruding big toes. A woman wearing an especially bulky 1950s formal doesn't feel restricted or helplessly exposed; rather, she bounces and plays with it.

Danzon is as moving in its way as Bausch's more "serious" work. She shapes her collage method of short scenes into an arc from childhood to adolescence, to adulthood and death. The discovery of sex is very much at the center of it all. The veteran Jan Minarik, delightfully grave in oversize diapers, deposits stones between the legs of two supine women waving their limbs, then sits back to contemplate them over the thumb he's sucking. He drags one of them offstage.

The happiest, most idyllic part of life, Danzon suggests, is in the innocence of pubescent sex, with horseplay marked by gleeful shrieks, as when the dancers, naked, chase each other behind a projection of leafy woods. It's almost Golden Age. The woods humorously slide aside, et voila!, the dancers are suddenly naiads cavorting in ocean waves. At another point, the women "learn to kiss" with the help of half-oranges. Again, much giggling.

Adult relationships, however, are still fraught with the battle of the sexes--although the women now seem to be winning. Men throw themselves at their feet to gaze up at them. In spite of the title, which refers to the music of Cuban origin that is often a couple dance, the dancing is mostly solo, maybe a busy little burst of footwork turning in and out.

The theme of dancing plays a larger role in Danzon than in much of Bausch's work. Dancing lessons and ballet get gently ragged, as with a teacher dressed entirely in pink flounces. But a high point of the evening is a rare appearance by the choreographer herself, who does a yearning, swooning dance of the upper body against huge closeup projections of colorful fish. Moving in slow motion as if joining them underwater, she becomes almost ecstatic with dreamy freedom.

After that, a man sprinkling earth as for a burial seems to represent just another part of the natural world. It's a rich evening.