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

24 & 25 November 2022  | 10 am
26 & 27 November 2022 | 4 pm

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

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