Pina Bausch’s Café Müller: Tanztheater as Theatrical Jurisprudence

Marett Leiboff

doi:10.14453/ltc.1861

article

Pina Bausch’s Café Müller: Tanztheater as Theatrical Jurisprudence

Abstract

Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater generated a seismic shift in dance through pieces created from the end of the 1960s until her death in 2009. I turn to a classic of her repertoire, her 1978 Café Müller as theatrical jurisprudence, to unravel a misreading of the most political piece of her oeuvre - a piece about the terror of Nazi Germany as a parable for the loss of interpretative memory in law – and to be haunted and tormented in a state that has lost its morality. To lose this story in law is fundamentally dangerous, presaging the rise of a dangerous new order.

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How to Cite: Leiboff, M. (2026) “Pina Bausch’s Café Müller: Tanztheater as Theatrical Jurisprudence”, Law Text Culture. 29(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.14453/ltc.1861