Body, silence and movement: Pina Bausch's Café Müller in Almodóvar's Hable con ella

The discipline of dance has been greatly marginalized within academic discourses. Such an exclusion has been due, in part, to the potential of dance to challenge our western epistemological tradition, which is based on a dichotomy between the mind and the body, and which assigns cognitive value to the mind, thus rendering the body invisible, marginal, and negative. This article explores the way in which Almodóvar uses the dance pieces by choreographer Pina Bausch in Hable con ella in order to reflect on the main action and themes of the film, such as the theme of silence and the eloquence of the body. The body and gesturality thus acquire every possible meaning, and it is through the silent, yet expressive, body of Alicia that Benigno attempts to achieve an interactive communication with Alicia. This article questions whether the dance intertexts in Hable con ella problematize the way in which Almodóvar uses the camp aesthetic, popular cultural and Spanish national references as well as more European ‘high art’ cultural references. What are the implications of this redefinition vis-à-vis his status as a European art-house film-maker? This article also explores how the dance pieces affect cinematic signification and how this resignification is represented in cinematic terms. Finally, the article suggests that the interconnection between dance and film in Hable con ella may be defined as a theoretical object for rethinking new languages of cultural criticism.