The arrival at the Adelaide Festival of The Rite of Spring/common ground[s] was always going to be a momentous occasion. It marks the 40th anniversary of Pina Bausch’s first visit to Australia when Tanztheater Wuppertal presented her seminal 1977 work Bluebeard alongside Kontakthof and 1980 during Jim Sharman’s 1982 Adelaide Festival. Those performances would have a life-changing effect on many who witnessed them, including the festival’s current joint Artistic Director Neil Armfield.

The Rite of Spring, Adelaide Festival, 2022. Photo © Andrew Beveridge

Twelve years after the revolutionary choreographer’s passing, the Pina Bausch Foundation is making headlines around the world for its restaging of The Rite of Spring with dancers selected from 14 different African countries. This collaboration with l’École des Sables and Sadler’s Wells is only the fourth time this jewel in Tanztheater Wuppertal’s crown has been performed by dancers outside the company and it is paired with a much more intimate piece that brings together Germaine Acogny, who has long invoked Bausch in her own work, and Malou Airadou, who danced in Bausch’s original staging of The Rite of Spring.

By definition, a double bill does not necessarily need...