Bicycle tube snails, tyre-furniture, air pump-kisses and in the midst of all is a dancer who moves as if made of rubber. Seemingly boneless and rather flexible the rubber girl moves through her own world. Here everything can be twisted, squashed, blown up and formed. Everything squeals, gnarls and pipes. Pffhhh… The choreographer and dancer Barbara Fuchs likes to twist the common view on objects and their material qualities. Leaning on anarchy, with affection for the absurd and for humour she engages in her artistic composition. Together with composer Jörg Ritzenhoff she developed Pffhhh…, a solo where not only rubber in various manifestations but also dancer Odile Foehl are tested for their elastic potential. The tanzfuchs team breathes a new life to bicycle tubes and rubber tyres, creates new spaces for experience beyond the known and changes things to companions of the dancer. Everything is object to change, yet never for long.

Pffhhh… is part of the performance project RESPACE on the relations between space, memory, sound and performance by the label tanzfuchs PRODUKTION, headed by Barbara Fuchs.

The premiere of Pfffhh…took place on 30 June 2016 at tanzhaus nrw in Dusseldorf.

DATES

16 – 20 March 2022 I 10 guest performances

at Dansens Hus_Oslo, Norway 

TEAM 

Artistic direction: Barbara Fuchs
Dance: Odile Foehl
Music: Jörg Ritzenhoff
Choreographic assistence: Emily Welther
Stage: Barbara Fuchs
PR: Kerstin Rosemann

Photography: cMEYER_ORIGINALS

A tanzfuchs PRODUKTION, co-produced by tanzhaus nrw as part of Take-off: Junger Tanz, supported by Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf and Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und Sport des Landes NRW. Also co-produced by BARNES CROSSING Freiraum für TanzPerformanceKunst. The production is further supported by Kulturamt der Stadt Köln, Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und Sport des Landes NRW and NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste. Supported also by the Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V. tanzfuchs PRODUKTION is endorsed by RheinEnergie Stiftung Kultur.

Press quotes

Neue Westfälische, Paderborn 23.11.2017

Queen of the rubber world

“She wakes up in a bed of rubber, starts a poetic performance with rubber tires and bicycle tubes and becomes, among other things, the queen of this freely designable space. In the studio of the theatre it squeaks and whistles, and by means of a loop machine the rubber girl creates the appropriate sound cosmos, which gets along without words.

Westdeutsche Zeitung, Krefeld 21.11.2016

Rubber woman inspires the spectators in the Heeder

[…] The wirily flexible dancer Odile Foehl stretches and stretches, bounces on the floor like a rubber ball and in the next position bends her limbs as if they were also made of rubber. At first, the kids on the benches are breathless excitement, incredulous amazement and then loud laughter.

Click to see all photos

It crackles and rustles, folds, crumples and tears, it is flexible, malleable and can also cut. There are many colours, sizes and thicknesses. Usually they write and print on it, and they also like to paint or do handicrafts: Paper. Cologne based choreographer Barbara Fuchs ventures into the paper jungle with dancer Sonia Mota and composer Jörg Ritzenhoff. With the help of paper, they make changes, external influences and temporal processes visible: paper “remembers” every wrinkle, every tear and every cut. And just as traces and external influences inscribe themselves in paper, experiences and impressions are inscribed in our bodies – through scars, quirks, wrinkles. Hardly anyone can embody this reminiscent body better than Sonia Mota, who turns 70 this year; she is an “archivist” of movements and dance. Together with the musician Jörg Ritzenhoff they roam the paper jungle and tell their experiences and stories with live sound and movements.

The premiere of Papierstück took place on 27 September 2018 at tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf.

DATES

22 – 24 March I 6 guest performances as part of augenauf! Theaterfrühling

at the Theater am Gleis, in Winterthur, Switzerland

2 April I 4 pm
3 April I 10 am as part of Von klein AUF Festival 2022

at the franz.K, in Reutlingen

TEAM

Artistic director: Barbara Fuchs
Dance: Sonia Mota
Music: Jörg Ritzenhoff
Stage: Odile Foehl
Light: Wolfgang Pütz
Dramaturgy: Henrike Kollmar
Assistance: Emily Welther
PR: Kerstin Rosemann

Photography: cMEYER_ORIGINALS

PIECE OF PAPER is co-produced by tanzhaus nrw as part of Take-off, the Kulturamt der Stadt Köln, the NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste, the Fonds Darstellende Künste, the Kunststiftung NRW and the Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur des Landes NRW. tanzfuchs PRODUKTION is supported by the RheinEnergie Stiftung Kultur.

Press quotes

O-Ton | Kulturmagazin mit Charakter

by Michael S. Zerban 

The deeper meaning of the paper

[…] And the fact that you can create interesting music with paper and cardboard also causes a lot of amazement. On the other hand, the Magic Flute for children is really old hat. […] An all-round beautiful afternoon for the children comes to an end – and one wishes that many more children would enjoy such an imaginative, varied and original performance. […]

Tanzende Säcke (choices.de) / Laudatio for the Cologne Children’s and Youth Theatre Prize

by Thomas Linden

[…] In hardly any other production this year was there so much laughter as in the wordless “piece of paper”. The poetry of the material lies in its analogy to skin, which also casts wrinkles and on which time and memory also inscribe themselves. […]

Stadtrevue

by Melanie Suchy

New in the theater – piece of paper

[…] The paper is paired with music, all the rustling, tearing, crackling, splashing becomes rhythm. A great game! […]

Laudation of the WESTWIND jury

[…] Barbara Fuchs has choreographed a scenic concert with the “piece of paper” and the performance has an unbelievably affectionate atmosphere, turned towards the audience. It works for the youngest and for any other age as well. Here the pure play, shimmering creativity, cheerfulness, nonsense, freedom reigns. Highest art! […]

Side by side, behind each other, around in a circle – hands held out, shoulders clasped, elbows hooked underneath – six dancers move through the room like one unit. Together they create the rhythm that guides them. Who leads the group? Is there a master of ceremonies? Through the complexity of movement, rhythm and song, the performers merge into a unity, a chain: like the links of a chain, they are interwoven, connected, sometimes open, sometimes closed – without beginning – without end, sometimes as a circle, sometimes as a row. With their movements they interweave, tie themselves to each other and thus create a human web, a body chain. They negotiate with each other, each is responsible – each chain is as strong as its weakest link. The performers engage in an increasingly frenzied game, breathing new energy and fun into the time-honored dances and chants. This creates a dynamic and rhythm that is also transferred to the audience and breathes new life into the tradition of the round dance. With her new production, choreographer Barbara Fuchs immerses herself in the tradition of the REIG – in this oldest cultural asset of the Occident, dance and song become a community-building ritual. All movements – no matter from which culture they originate – become a ceremonial act and the dance a magical ceremony of movement. The bodies of the performers are central to the ritual acts as well as to the collective embodiment. After the round dance was replaced by the couple dance in Europe, this collective kind of embodiment still shows up in everyday ritual actions: from playing and storytelling together in kindergarten, to spiritual body communities in yoga and tai chi, to collectively ecstatic bodies in la ola waves and communal chants in soccer stadiums FATTY CHAIN is a production of tanzfuchs PRODUKTION in cooperation with ehrenfeldstudios e.V., supported by the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Fonds Darstellende Künste. tanzfuchs PRODUKTION receives top funding from the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

DATES

Sat. August 21 I 6pm I PREMIERE

Sun. August 22 I 4pm

Mon. 23 & Tue. August 24 I 10am

Sat. 16 & Sun. October 17 I 4pm

at ehrenfeldstudios, Cologne

*Sat. & Sun. before the performance: “ONE MOMENT, PLEASE” – a 10-minute improvisation performance by Caroline Simon

TEAM

Direction, Stage, Light: Barbara Fuchs

Music: Jörg Ritzenhoff

Performance: Odile Foehl, Katharina Sim, Alina Feske, Arthur Schopa, Michael Zier, Philine Herrlein

Costume: Stefanie Bold Lighting: Wolfgang Pütz

Press Work: Kerstin Rosemann

Production Management: Olivia Bott

NRW Scholarship holder for children’s and youth theater: Ronja Nadler