When Bausch created her Rite in 1975, she was already controversial. In 1973, when she took over the ballet company in the German industrial city of Wuppertal, her work provoked furious reactions. Audiences walked out, banging doors as they left. Sometimes they threw things. Bausch kept going. By the early 1980s, she had established herself as a major figure in 20th-century dance. She is famously aloof, reluctant to give interviews: the high priestess of tanztheater.