More than that, they're part of a very personal rehearsal process. Bausch questions her dancers, who answer in speech or movement. The questions cover memories, relationships, responses to particular situations. She might ask them to imitate one another, to do something they are ashamed of, to act out a mood. Sometimes the prompt is just a word or a sentence. The answers give Bausch her raw material: gestures, dialogue, scenes, which she builds into stage works.

Bausch creates images that stick in your mind: the carnation field, the couples whose games get stuck in a rut. Her performers are committed, daring and raw. Audiences argue about Bausch: exasperated by her fractured collages, or swept along by her creation of pictures, of relationships, of unspoken atmospheres.