In the spring of 1984, when she created Auf dem Gebirge hat man ein Geschrei gehört (On the Mountain a Cry was heard), what did Pina Bausch perceive, from the old cinema in Wuppertal where her company rehearses, of the upheavals in the outside world? When looking at the piece, critics have always mentioned the fear of a nuclear disaster... two years before Chernobyl! “Fear has always existed in my shows, but before it touched on the problem of the individual in society. Now it is collective. It is the fear of the whole of humanity threatened with self-destruction or a dark future,” Pina confided (1). Fear, in all its forms, is the central subject of this piece. She casts her diffuse shadow on a universe of brown, soft, messy earth, which covers the stage - an invention of Peter Pabst, a genius production designer - and is embodied in the figure of a macabre clown, a potential executioner who bursts, one after the other, without batting an eyelid, inflatable balloons which he pulls out of his swimming trunks. The ogre of childhood nightmares, the monster of all our fears, his sly presence immediately creates agitation. A tortured world. But, with the sense of ambiguity that was Pina’s speciality, fear mingles with the comic and situations turn from realism to the absurd. Almost 40 years after its creation, now presented by the Lyon Opera Ballet Auf dem Gebirge hat man ein Geschrei gehört has lost nothing of its sharpness, against a soundtrack where the voices of Billie Holiday, Fred Astaire, and Gerry Mulligan crackle, or this song whose title alone is worth the promise of all Pina Bausch's plays: Parlez-moi d’amour...

(1) Raphael de Gubernatis, “The glory of Pina Bausch”, Le Nouvel Observateur, April 10-16, 1987.

Direction & Choreography : Pina Bausch
Set Design : Peter Pabst
Costumes : Marion Cito
Dramaturgy : Raimund Hoghe
Musical Collaboration : Matthias Burkert
Collabotation : Hans Pop

Music : Billie Holiday, Fred Astaire, Enrico Caruso, Boris Vian, Henry Purcell, Felix Mendelssohn, among others

World premiere: 13 May 1984, Schauspielhaus Wuppertal
Original Cast
Jakob Andersen, Melanie Karen Lien, Elena Majnoni, Anne Martin, Dominique Mercy, Jan Minarik (Jean Mindo), Nazareth Panadero, Héléna Pikon, Arthur Rosenfeld, Jean-Laurent Sasportes, Janusz Subicz, Beatrice Libonati, Ed Kortlandt, Anne Marie Benati, Bénédicte Billiet, Matthias Burkert, Jean-François Duroure, Dominique Duszynski, Josephine Ann Endicott, Lutz Förster, Kyomi Ichida, Urs Kaufmann, Silvia Kesselheim, Francis Viet

Performance rights : Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt, in représentation of Pina Bausch Foundation, Wuppertal.