German choreographer Pina Bausch dies at 68

BERLIN - Pina Bausch, the German choreographer renowned for her pioneering, collagelike stagings that meshed dance and theater work, died yesterday. She was 68.

The Wuppertal Dance Theater in western Germany, where she had served as director, announced the death. It did not give the cause, but said Ms. Bausch's "unexpectedly fast" death came only five days after she was diagnosed with cancer. She and her company last appeared on stage in Wuppertal on June 21, the statement added.

"We have lost with Pina Bausch a wonderful artist, a world-class dancer and choreographer, and last but not least a prominent representative of German culture," German President Horst Koehler said in a statement.

"The dance world has lost its most significant contemporary choreographer," German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said in an e-mailed statement. "She was an example and an icon, a great inventor and visual innovator. She succeeded in creating not only an independent body of work, but a completely new art form. We are talking, of course, about Tanztheater" (dance theater).

Born on July 27, 1940, in Solingen, Germany, Ms. Bausch started her dance studies at the Folkwang School in Essen and trained at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

She danced at the New American Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera in New York before returning to Germany in 1962.

She then joined the Folkwang Ballet in Essen, where her own choreography became part of the program in 1968. Five years later, she became director and choreographer of the newly founded Wuppertal theater.

Ms. Bausch's works focus on the personal - human existence, relationships and communication. Among her productions are Die Sieben Todsuenden (The Seven Deadly Sins, 1976), based on a piece by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht; the violent Blaubart (Bluebeard, 1977); the witty Kontakthof (1978); and more recently, Vollmond (Full Moon, 2006).

An innovative creator of striking, absurdist scenes, she won Britain's Laurence Olivier Award in 2006 for outstanding achievement in dance. She was honored for her productions Carnations and Palermo Palermo.

In 2007, she won Japan's Kyoto Prize for arts and philosophy for her pioneering work in developing a new genre of ballet.

Her work has committed followers, but audience reactions were often mixed, with some people booing or even walking out.

Ms. Bausch also performed in films by Pedro Almodóvar and Federico Fellini and staged her choreographies for the Ballet de L'Opera National de Paris.

Details of survivors and funeral arrangements were not immediately available.