Pina Bausch in the television talk show Willemsens Woche

While Pina Bausch gave regular interviews about the Tanztheater Wuppertal for film and TV, she never took part in talk shows, where she would have been the centre of attention. With one exception: the Hamburg author and journalist Roger Willemsen had for some time been asking her to appear on his show Willemsens Woche. He received a positive response only 1998 shortly before the show was discontinued.

At the time, a month-long festival lasting to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pina Bausch in Wuppertal was about to start – with around 430 artists that the choreographer had got to know over thirty years. There would also be a retrospective of important pieces by the Tanztheater Wuppertal. In the weeks and months leading up to the festival, Pina Bausch gave many interviews with journalists and also decided to take part in a TV talk show for the first – and only – time. The other guest on the programme, which was recorded and aired on the same day, was the actor and singer Herbert Grönemeyer, who Pina Bausch had got to know in 1978 while working on her Macbeth piece Er nimmt sie an der Hand und führt sie in das Schloß, die anderen folgen (He takes her by the hand and leads her into the castle, the others follow) at the Schauspielhaus Bochum. Grönemeyer worked there from 1974 as an actor and later as musical director.

Stefan Koldehoff in
O-Ton Pina Bausch - Interviews und Reden
Published by Stefan Koldehoff and the Pina Bausch Foundation
Released in 2016 in the series Pina Bausch Editions by Nimbus, Kunst und Bücher
ISBN 978-3-03850-021-6

More about Roger Willemsen:
https://www.roger-willemsen.de/
https://archiv.adk.de/bigobjekt/48569