Director and Photographer: Lee Yanor | Editor: Mariana Bouhsira | Production: Lee Yanor

“It looks very chaotic but somehow it makes sense,” Pina said to me in the rehearsal studio, where she danced parts of her solo from Danzon. The dance was constantly interrupted, which enabled me to capture the emotions that emerged from the intimate silences, conversations and relieving laughter.

The first time I met the choreographer Pina Bausch was at Café Mistral - Paris in 1993. We have had an ongoing dialogue for 12 years and the outcome of this was the idea for the film: Coffee with Pina, a 52 min documentary/video-art through a personal point of view on Pina's universe. It was filmed in Paris in 2002, where we first met, and in Wuppertal, Germany in 2005, home-town of Pina Bausch and her company.

Something between a memory and a dream leads the associative development of the film. A cafe, fountain's water in Paris, rehearsal studios, industrial chimneys, and railroad tracks, endless forests and underwater dancing polar bears – all blend into the dance parts filmed from the creations Agua and Rough Cut. The film links the different elements in order to convey the choreography of state of mind.

Movement is the main theme in my works as a photographer. From this derives my dialogue with the world of dance. Meetings with various choreographers have become a significant part of my artistic work. The film Coffee with Pina is an intimate dialogue with the choreographer Pina Bausch. I gave freedom to my intuitions and visual associations while filming, and later on, by setting it up in the film. This way the film was built: like filmed photographs. I was looking for crossed moments, between infinite tenderness, to a sudden explosion of violence and a loss of control. And maybe, what appears to us is a magical freedom beyond any bodily experience, where anyone can turn momentarily to a dancing man. –Lee Yanor

Further Reading:

Lee Yanor

Coffee with Pina_Danzon

Article_in_Haaretz_Newspaper (.PDF)