Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 75

Let’s Dance
Jane Saren
Jane Saren is a native of Edinburgh; she has lived elsewhere in the UK including some formative years
in Liverpool, working for Social Services in a community development role. Her professional interests
encompass public policy, particularly health & social care; good governance; communications; and
transformative innovation. Jane established a public affairs company prior to Scottish devolution
and is the author, with James McCormick, of ‘The Politics of Scottish Labour’s Heartlands’ in
Hassan (ed) 2004. She is currently employed part-time in a charity which works broadly to promote
social inclusion. Jane is an Associate of the International Futures Forum and Trustee of a grantgiving
charity. Within the current somewhat febrile climate of public discourse and political activity,
Jane welcomes her involvement as a Global Cultural Fellow as a timely opportunity to explore the
power of artistic expression to communicate emotion, challenge ideas of ‘otherness’, and foster a
sense of human connection.
In ���� I saw Pina Bausch’s production of Nelken at the Edinburgh Festival.
I was captivated from the start when the curtain rose to a field of carnations:
plastic flowers, upright as if sprouting from the stage.
How do I attempt to describe the performance? Nelken included music,
screams, gunfire, Alsatian dogs barking, sign language, and spoken words.
It was powerful and subtle, playful and brash, sensuous, and brutal. There
were allusions to German history and culture, yet Pina Bausch’s artistic
voice was universal and oblique, a transcending place. What staggered me
was her work’s capacity to tap into some shared well of consciousness and
experience, by-passing the critical brain; despite the force of its impact,
she left space for each member of the audience to discover the personal
resonances and co-produce the meaning of the performance.
Siri Hustvedt (����) states of Bausch’s work:
“Although one can feel the ferocious rigour of her choreographic
vision, one does not come away with a message or story that can
be explicated. One cannot encapsulate in words what one has seen.
Rather her work generates multiple and often ambiguous
meanings which, for a viewer like me, is precisely what
constitutes the extraordinary strength of her choreography.”
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