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Okay, hard-core dance fans, call me a philistine. I'd never heard of German modern-dance choreographer Pina Bausch until "Pina," director Wim Wenders' Oscar-nominated documentary tribute, came along.

Watching "Pina," I learned virtually nothing about Bausch beyond a few dance pieces she created and her strong work ethic. I had to go to the Internet to learn about her life, her place in the annals of modern dance, her mentors (Paul Taylor, Antony Tudor, Kurt Joos). Wenders assumes you either know these things, or can appreciate the film simply as a celebration of her work.

Like Bausch, Wenders ("Paris, Texas," "Wings of Desire") was from the Düsseldorf area. He shared her existential aesthetic. They were longtime friends. In 2009, they were about to make a movie together featuring her dances when she suddenly died of cancer within days of diagnosis. She was 68.

Bausch's company of dancers, Tanztheater Wuppertal, persuaded Wenders to go ahead with the 3-D shoot a few months later.

If you are mad about modern dance, you likely will be mad about this film.

If you appreciate artistically framed images and abstract themes expressed through movement, you likely will appreciate this film.

If you don't care about aesthetics and modern dance, you won't care about this film.

I don't think I've ever experienced a more disruptive screening than I did for "Pina." People behind me talked loudly, then got up and left in ones and twos over twenty minutes or so. Children ran in and out, up and down. A couple chatted and giggled, even after others shushed them.

But the vivid imagery of the dance pieces hangs with me days later. While the 3-D effect doesn't have dancers popping off the screen and into your lap, it does add depth and a sense that you are close to them.

"Cafe Müller," one of the rare dance pieces in which Bausch herself appeared, centers on a woman in anguish and uses a signature Bausch device — repetition of movement — amid a gray room full of scattered cafe chairs.

"The Rite of Spring," featuring male and female interactions, takes place on a stage covered in dirt. "Vollmond," with a giant boulder as a visual centerpiece, uses onstage rain and a pool of water. "Kontakthof" fast-cuts to change the age of the dancers from one generation to another.

One by one, over close-ups of their faces, Tanztheater dancers give reverent voice-over impressions of Pina: how it felt like she could see their movements even with her eyes closed, how her verbal direction was so spare they hung on every word. "Go on searching." "Dance for love." "You need to go a little more crazy."

Sometimes the images are bizarre — a woman on pointe, amid an industrial setting, with veal stuffed in her toe shoes; a dancer with leafblower cavorting in a wood; a couple dancing streetside as traffic whips by and a monorail passes by overhead.

The music ranges from classical to Portuguese to k.d. lang. The movement is just as eclectic: abrupt, then fluid; overflowing with emotion, or devoid of it; fragile, or strong.

But beautiful, and starkly original, something else Wenders and Pina have in common.

Contact the writer:

402-444-1269, bob.fischbach@owh.com