SWEET MAMBO
Sadler’s Wells Theatre
★★★★
“human emotion in every manifestation: joy and jealousy, fun and frustration, play and pain”
If you are not familiar with the work of Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater style, a little bit of mental preparation is in order. What you are about to see defies definition in any of the usual genres of the performing and dramatic arts. Let go of any preconceptions about dance, mime, acting, vocal work, music and you will have a visual and emotional ride unlike any other.
Tanztheater translates roughly from the German as dance theatre but that doesn’t capture it. It is a style made famous by choreographer Bausch after she was appointed head of Wuppertal Ballet in 1973 and reinvented the company as Tanztheater Wuppertal. This piece, Sweet Mambo, was her penultimate creation. She died a year after its first performance in 2008.
The performance opens with a stage set simply with white, floor-to-ceiling floating gauze across the back. Through these curtains steps a single figure, adorned as simply in a floor length light gown, who begins to move. Soon she will be joined by nine other dancers, six female, three male who will move in and out of the scene, sometimes in solo performance, sometimes moving together as duos, sometimes using each other as props.
They will run, stride, speak, laugh, sing, cry out, collapse, stagger, drop into the stalls. Throughout they are accompanying and accompanied by a complex musical backdrop melding sentimental violins with strident electro-funk, folk music and monologue, to name but a few of the array of sounds brought in to heighten your senses. For a while, the 1938 film ‘The Blue Fox’ runs in the background. The gauze itself becomes a character, a huge monster blowing in from the side to dance with the humans or panels dropping from the gridiron to be used as stage furniture.
What this is all about is human emotion in every manifestation: joy and jealousy, fun and frustration, play and pain – as well as the ‘sweetness and severity’ of the official description. Bausch created the piece to celebrate woman – but men are required. So, while the focus is on the women of the company, the male dancers are essential to fully realise the range of feeling – and each gets his moment in the spotlight.
Eight of the ten dancers are from the original troupe. It is hard to pick out individuals – that is really not the point – but it is worth mentioning that only one is under 50; this in itself is an homage to the capacity of women. Nazareth Panadero is 70 and still an immense onstage presence. The virtuoso performance belongs to Australian dancer Julie Shanahan, born in 1962.
For a Bausch piece, the number of performers is unusually small, but the weight of the creatives and collaborators behind this presentation is immense. This includes Sadlers Wells itself, which first presented Tanztheater Wuppertal in 1982 and Dr Daniel Siekhaus as Artistic Director. The musical collaboration was led by Matthias Burkert and Andreas Eisenschneider; Peter Pabst was set designer, and Marion Cito led costume design.
My only reservation is that, unless you are a Bausch aficionado, you might find the evening a bit confusing and rather long. But Sweet Mambo delivers emotions on every level, so nothing is redundant.
SWEET MAMBO
Sadler’s Wells Theatre
Reviewed on 11th February 2026
by Louise Sibley
Photography by Ursula Kaufmann
