The Pina Bausch Foundation was established in 2009 shortly after the death of Pina Bausch by her son Salomon Bausch. The charitable foundation based in Wuppertal, Germany owns the rights to the works and choreographies of Pina Bausch along with the set and costume designs of Rolf Borzik and the extensive Pina Bausch archive. The foundation’s role is to carry Pina Bausch’s oeuvre forward into the future, to disseminate it and enable its performance. Preserving a work of choreographic art requires much more ongoing work than most other forms, as no sooner is it realised, it is gone again, and must be brought back to life on stage again with each performance.
The Pina Bausch Archive, filled with production details and documentation, is an abundant source of knowledge. This resource, combined with the unique knowledge of the Tanztheater Wuppertal ensemble, is what allows the continued performance of her pieces. For this process, it is not only important to continually pass on the knowledge to new dancers, but also to train people to pass this knowledge on.
In recent years, dancers took on the role of directors, transmitting choreographies directly to dancers within and outside Tanztheater Wuppertal. Thus, pieces have been rehearsed with companies such as the Bavarian State Ballet, the English National Ballet, the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, and the Paris Opera. The positive experiences from these transmission projects encouraged the Pina Bausch Foundation to continue looking to the future by searching for new forms of transferal of Pina Bausch’s works, thus widening access to them, through the ‘Reimagining Transmission’ initiative.