He was born in Germany, in Solingen. At the age of 15, she began to study dance at the Folkwangschule directed by Kurt Jooss. After four years she received a scholarship to the United States, which gave her the title of 'Special Student' at the Juliard school of music in New York with teachers such as Anthony Tudor and José Limon. The following year she was engaged by the New American Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and began her collaboration with Paul Taylor. Two years later, she returned to Germany, where she became a solo dancer with the newly founded Folkwang-Ballet, with whom she toured extensively. This marked the beginning of her intense collaboration with Jean Cébron, a French choreographer and dancer. In 1969, he took over the Folkwang-Tanz Studio together with Hans Zullig and taught at the Folkwang-hochschule in Essen. In the meantime, he composed numerous choreographies that were performed in Europe and America.
In 1973, she took over the direction of the Tanztheater in Wuppertal, soon giving rise to one of the most extraordinary examples of theatrical experimentation, with a constant work of profound and painful creativity that led her over the years to take on a leading role in the world of entertainment and culture, gathering around her a group of formidable dancer-actors.
Creations such as 'The Rite of Spring, Blaubart, Café Muller, 1980, Kontaktof and Nelken himself', have toured the world, conquering a vast international audience and establishing one of the greatest theatre legends of our time. Created in 1983 in Munich, 'Nelken' arrives in Rovereto in a new version (previously unseen in Italy) lasting one and a half hours without intermission. The show takes place on a plain of pink carnations. There are 9000 of them, manufactured, it is said, in Bangkok. At the end of the show they will be trampled and torn. The performance, as always in Pina Bausch's work, violently strikes the spectator's emotions, leading them to that identification that has often led to talk of 'theatre of experience'.
The key themes of Bausch's work are childhood, male and female identity, the relationship with one's own body, the ability to suffer, the fear of loving and being loved. With images and a very precise analysis of everyday gestures, the choreography stimulates all the dormant complexity of the unconscious
