Pina Bausch, 1940-2009

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Pina Bausch died today of cancer at 68. To call the artistic director of Germany’s Wuppertal Dance Theater a choreographer doesn’t fully described the artistic innovator.

‘Her influence extended far beyond the dance world into the theater world, and even movies and the staging of opera,’ Lewis Segal, former Times dance critic, said Tuesday.

‘It is limiting to call her a choreographer; she liked the term ‘dance theater.’ She was important because she thought everything belonged together -- speech, movement, design, commenting on the audience.

‘She was famous for saying that she was not as interested in how people move as in what moves people. She wanted to tell a story.’

Read about Bausch in Diane Haithman’s obituary.

-- Sherry Stern