How would you dance, if you knew you were going to die? This is the central question the late choreographer Pina Bausch asked of her dancers in 1975 when she created her seminal work The Rite of Spring. The work examines unyielding ritual when the sacrifice of a “chosen one” changes the season from winter to spring. This pioneering piece, establishing Bausch's iconic approach, has flourished to become one of the 20^th century’s most significant and important works in dance. Faithful to Stravinsky’s visceral score, Bausch’s monumental choreography is given a thrilling new life by a specially assembled company of 34 dancers from 14 African countries. Dancing on a peat-covered stage, they clash and engage in a poetic struggle of life, ritual and sacrifice that pays tribute to Bausch’s unparalleled genius.

Rite is paired with a new work, common ground[s], created, performed and inspired by the lives of two remarkable women who have each juggled roles as choreographers, professors and grandmothers: Germaine Acogny, the founder of the Senegalese École des Sables, who is widely considered to be “the mother of contemporary African dance,” and Malou Airaudo, who performed leading roles in many of Bausch’s early works as a member of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Their tender choreographic response to Rite reflects their shared histories, emotional experiences and common ground.