Interview with Jan Minařík, 15/5/2022 (1/3)

We came here yesterday and there was no sign of a border anymore! Was it like that before?

In the beginning, you were not allowed to bring plants across the border and you were checked. Since my name is Jan Minařík and there was a famous Czech spy — on Radio Free Europe, who was also called Minařík, the Czech officials came to search me — because they thought I was that famous spy!

I'm from Prague. I lived there until I was 21. Then I went to Brno because I got a job at the National Theatre in Prague after I left the conservatory, eventually I didn't like it anymore, so I went to Brünn, today Brno. Yes, and when the "friends" from Russia, Eastern Germany and Poland occupied the Czech Republic, I got a contract in Innsbruck, Tyrol. I even got the official title of "Premier Solo Dancer from Tyrol". Because of this title, whenever the police stopped me and made me take a breath alcohol test, the chief of police would throw away the vial and just tell me: "Mr. Minařík, you can go, but please drive home carefully. "

It was a day school. I used to do gymnastics before. I thought I would not have to carry weapons, and be in the sports team. Then I had an accident and it was over with gymnastics. Then, I heard that the military had dance group in Prague, so I tried to learn to dance. I got accepted into an amateur dance group in the college. There was this woman teaching us, and after my first class, she came to me and told me that she was a professor of modern dance at the conservatory, and that I should try to study dance. So, I came to the admission test for the conservatory. There were six or eight hundred children there, they all have been taking ballet and dancing for years. They would tell them to do 'grand jetés' across the floor, but for me they'd say Jeníčeko [little Jan], it's just like jumping across a stream. I was accepted and I started learning to dance and train. We worked hard, every day at least for eight hours. Normally, it was an hour and a half of classical ballet and another hour and a half of folklore and 45 minutes of modern dance, the rest of the studies until 9:00 in the evening. Then, I went to that dance group at the college, with practice in the evening until 11:00 or so! There were also very good dancers in class with me. There was Jiří Kylián with me in class. We were friends and went out in Prague together. There was an old movie theater where they played music. A well equiped venue with 32 audio channels, so that you could listen to music with great fidelity. I graduated from high school, and the conservatory and right after that I was employed at the National Theatre in Prague. In order not to have to join the military, I actually studied pedagogy at the Academy of Musical Arts.

From Prague I went to Brno, from Brno to Innsbruck, from Innsbruck to Wuppertal, still for the classic dance company. I danced the Prince in "Cinderella", and roles like that. Then, I developed problems with my left hip, they operated on me. Everything went well, still I thought, I would be better off if I try to go to teach in Essen-Werden at the Folkwang School. The former director of the Folkwang School Mr. Hans Züllig offered me a position as a professor there. Then came Kurt Jooss and Pina Bausch to talk to me in Essen-Werden. Anna Markard, the daughter of Kurt Jooss, was also there. They needed someone to play the role of "The Death" in The Green Table in Wuppertal. That was the first premiere in Wuppertal with Fritz, Rodeo [Agnes de Mille 1943] and The Green Table [Kurt Jooss 1932]. Yes, they talked me into it, and then I kept dancing. I liked what Pina Bausch was doing. When Pina did the choreography for "Venusberg" in the opera Tannhauser, I watched the dress rehearsal. Afterwards, Pina and her dancers sat at a table in the cafeteria and I went to them and said I that really liked it. Everybody looked at me perplexed, and since then, no one from the classical ballet ensemble talked to me anymore.

Later, when we did "Macbeth", full piece name is He Takes Her by The Hand and Leads Her Into the Castle, The Others Follow, that's when I met Beatrice Libonati. She auditoned and I was teaching the classes. There's something else I want to say. Pina Bausch was together with Rolf Borzik, and he had Leukemia, and I actually watched out for him. I was together with them from seven in the morning until night when we went to sleep, I brought them home. Rolf Borzik introduced me to photography. I set up a photo laboratory in the basement of my house, and was making pictures there. I didn't have much money back then, so I bought film in bulk: 21 meters of black and white film, and rolled it into the film cassette rolls. I shot every day at least three film rolls. I have thousands of photos, I prepared a book about Pina Bausch and her family, there are 117 photos in it. I visited her parents often. Together with Pina and Rolf Borzik we spent vacations with her parents, who lived near Frankfurt. So I made photos of her father, her mother, with Pina, all about their domestic life. No one else in the world has these photos.

As a dancer and photographer, you had access to rehearsals and backstage during performances.

I took pictures of "Café Müller" from the wings and then went in to perform. I always had a bag with me, I had a Canon R1, I think that was the model name, actually two Canons and five lenses: 28mm, 50mm, 75mm, 200mm and one more.

Behind the police station I had my ballet school. That's also where "Bluebeard" was created together with Rolf Borzik, Pina Bausch, Marlis Alt, Ed Kortlandt and Yolanda Meier. The rest of the company was doing an opera in the theater.

We worked there in my house. We used my reel to reel tape player, with the rewinding as in the play. Later, I donated my tape player to the theater, they found two more replacement tape players. Then, it happened that I was together with Beatrice Libonati, and one night I got a call from Pina Bausch saying that Rolf Borzik was very sick, whether I could come. As I came and he already had sepsis. Months before his spleen was removed, after that operation I was with my parents at Rolf Borzik's parents in Holland.

Soňa Červená was the only singer in "Macbeth". She was a female singer, but there were dancers, actors and singers, a very colorful mix of skills in that cast, wasn't it?

There were Malou Airaudo, Dominique Mercy, Jo Ann Endicott, Hans Dieter Knebel. He started with us as an assistant, and afterwards became part of the cast. That's how he started to build his career, he was in the Burgtheater in Vienna. It was an interesting time.

How could she bring these different abilities together? How was the collaboration in that piece? How did Pina Bausch work with that?

I was very lucky. When I started dancing, in the college dance group, there was a man named Eugen Růžek, he worked for the television. He made it possible for me to watch all films with Fred Astaire, pieces from Maurice Béjart. I could watch all these recordings. All of a sudden, I had different ideas about dancing than those who didn't have access to this material.

Yes, I do have a good contact with the audience. I also loved, for example, the performances of "Bluebeard", where the audience left, screamed and complained. To get the audience in my hands. This fight was very important to me. That has changed over time at the Wuppertal Tanztheater. Now, people start clapping even before the performance begins. There is just not as much tension from stage to audience as it used to be.

Yes, it's a way of baring yourself for the woman he loves, up to the point that he kills her through this love. And people must have the feeling that every one of those who come on stage is Bluebeard and also Judith. This is very important in this piece, other pieces have also their important points.

Can you remember the time of the creation of "Sacre" [The Rite of Spring]?

Yes, Pina Bausch worked a lot with Michael Diekamp for the movements for men, and the movements for women she created herself. It turned out to be a wonderful piece.

Ralf Borzik and "Bluebeard". Rolf created these interior rooms and many of his stage designs, as with "Bluebeard", which was an inner room with natural elements like the leaves.

Yes, it has something to do with the fact that the type of floor brings people to certain ways of moving. Whether "Bluebeard" with leaves, water on stage in Arien, or salt on stage at Madrid, or that fallen brick wall in Palermo Palermo: all that brings a different qualities of movement, but also behaviors on stage.

Yes, of course, it brings different colors to the pieces. I think that almost all of these pieces were created in the rehearsal rooms ... In the Lichtburg.
Or in your dance school.
But then you came up with this other situation with water or earth or salt ...

That was actually already planned, at least to my knowledge, Rolf Borzik had had that all planned with Pina Bausch. How it was with Peter Pabst, I don't know. I do know that Pina always persuaded Peter Pabst to do something with the stage floor, that was in line with her ideas. She often discussed these ideas with me, and they were in line with ideas from Rolf Borzik.

But also the costumes follow his guidelines: everyday clothing, or elegant are also there, yes?

Yes, true. That was with Rolf Borzik like that. Still, there were also things like in Iphigenie auf Tauris and Orpheus und Eurydike that was of course something different. These were operas with a different type of aesthetic. Afterwards, had Marion Cito always searched for costumes everywhere. Mostly these were second-hand costumes, second-hand accessories, but they were always very appropriate.

For Café Müller Pina Bausch invited others. Back then, that were two premieres per season. That season there was also with *"Macbeth", three premieres.

Yes, for Café Müller there were these questions: black glasses, chairs and tables, red wig. Hans Pop choreographed one section, Gerhard ... [Gerhard Bohner and Gigi Caciuléanu] Anyway, I only did Pina Bausch's "Café Müller". That was with Pina, Malou Airaudo, Dominique Mercy, Nazareth Panadero and I. Yes, Nazareth took over from Meryl.

Yes, but who had the idea: Pina Bausch, Rolf Borzik, together, you?

Those tables and chairs, that was an idea of Rolf Borzik.

There was the first Asian tour, and then came Arien.

There I took pictures on stage, I broke two cameras because of the water. I used a tripod and timer, but also handheld.

Where are these pictures now?

I have them all here. It's a completely different look, from inside, from stage. It's basically part of the piece. Yes.