Artists spend most of their time in a rehearsal space rather than on stage. And only a small part of the material created in rehearsals is integrated in the final performance. This solo performances is a very intimite work in which choreographer and dancer Barbara Fuchs opens her private archive of rehearsal notes and recordings, discarded ideas and failed attempts. She constructs a space of memory oscilliating between different time levels but always pointing in one direction.This review becomes a very personal localization where personal and artistic snapshots and future prospects overlap.

in one direction is the third part of the performance series RESPACE dealing with the relations between space, memory, sound and performance.

The premiere of in one direction took place on 3 February 2017 at Barnes Crossing.

 

 

TEAM

Artistic direction / Performance: Barbara Fuchs
Composition / live electronic: Jörg Ritzenhoff
Artistic assistance: Ursula Nill
Lighting: Garlef Keßler
Stage design: Odile Foehl
Dramaturgical counseling: Henrike Kollmar
PR: Kerstin Rosemann

Photography: cMEYER_ORIGINALS

in one direction is a tanzfuchs PRODUKTION co-produced by BARNES CROSSING – Freiraum für TanzPerformanceKunst.

The production is funded by Kulturamt der Stadt Köln, Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und Sport des Landes NRW and Kunststiftung NRW. tanzfuchs PRODUKTION is supported by RheinEnergie Stiftung Kultur.

Press quotes

Mosaik, WDR

Interview with Nicole Strecker, February 2, 2017

[…] Memory in Barbara Fuchs’ current piece turns the process into a course through rooms, a groping through the memory chambers of the brain. “I wanted to do a piece on a biographical space.” For the metaphorical – emotional dimensions of spaces have interested Barbara Fuchs for a long time. In one of her last pieces, for example, together with the composer Jörg Ritzenhoff, she transformed the room into a living creature with a network of cables and loudspeakers like the synapses and cords of a human nervous system in which it twitches, fizzes and hums. […]

Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger from 08.02.2017

There is no going back from Melanie Suchy

[…] Barbara Fuchs choreographs memory as back and forth movements: One looks at old photographs hanging in the furnished corridor and those she holds in front of a camera eye, so that the live projection also shows the focusing. Once this camera captures the spectators as in a group photo, and one wonders how this will be remembered later. Or how all the digital natives will one day fish pictures out of cloud boxes to tell about grandmothers, dance-loving childhood, stage performances.

 

Resonating emotions, soundless metronome, quiet vibrations, remembered abundance, moved space

The team tanzfuchs PRODUKTION, navigates collectively with the audience through an auditive-performative installation in which fictional, abstracted and remembered spaces coincide and collide with each other. Movements and sounds generate the pulse of the space, creating a textured fabric of unstable, dynamic and fluctuating memories.

 

 

TEAM 

Artistic direction: Barbara Fuchs

Electroacoustic composition: Jörg Ritzenhoff

Performance: Odile Foehl, Pietro Micci, Ursula Nill, Emily Welther

Choreographie/Space: Ensemble

Lightdesign: Barbara Fuchs, Wolfgang Pütz

Stage: Max Pothmann

PR: Kerstin Rosemann

Photography: MEYER ORIGINALS

Funded by: Kulturamt der Stadt Köln, Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und  Sport des Landes NRW, Kunststiftung NRW, RheinEnergieStiftung Kultur

Co-produced by Barnes Crossing – Freiraum für TanzPerformanceKunst

Press quotes

Tanzweb Köln (24.09.2015) Klaus Dilger

PREMIERE: “FOYER”

[…] In this installative performance the spectator becomes part of the action and is a moving element in the space. Barbara Fuchs is not only a master of minimalism on stage, even her “announcements” carry within them this pleasant degree of clarity, reduction and simultaneous modesty, which is remarkably different from the often loud and empty chatter of many other (dance) performances and the “advertising shells” surrounding them.

 

The third and final part of the cycle (GE) – (FÜHL) – (LOS)/ (UN) – (FEEL) – (ING) approaches in a performative and tonal space staging the chaos, disorder, confusion and anomalies.

Intimate voices, simulated systems of order, lack of distance and physical discharges:

DIS_ORDER – a flickering net of acoustic and physical activity.

In DIS_ORDER the ensemble deals with divergent emotional behavior, subjective structures, and perceptual phenomena of introspection and extrospection which creates contrasting and contradictory spaces of intimacy and public. The premiere of DIS_ORDER took place on 17. October 2014.

 

 

TEAM

Artistic direction: Barbara Fuchs
Electroacoustic composition:  Jörg Ritzenhoff
Performance: Odile Foehl, Pietro Micci, Ursula Nill
Technique: Wolfgang Pütz

Photo: MEYER ORIGINALS

Funded by: Kulturamt der Stadt Köln, Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und  Sport des Landes NRW, RheinEnergieStiftung Kultur

Press quotes:

Kölner Stadtanzeiger (21.10.2014) Nicole Strecker

Helpless neurons in the wax factory

Choreographers are the “brain” of a production – and Barbara Fuchs has now staged herself and her composer Jörg Ritzenhoff in the Cologne wax factory, symbolically as such. The two of them sit in a corner at a control desk: the control centre for all the evening’s activities. Cable strands lead across the room, at the ends of which the dancers act as if they were cell bodies on nerve cords. Fuchs and Ritzenhoff devote the third part of their triology about the world of feelings of the “Dis_Order”: the disorder in the nervous system. The nervous system is staged here as a sound-movement installation that can never come to rest. Fuchs makes microphone cables dance as if she were dealing with a “cable ballet”, in addition to dancing bodies that weave themselves into inextricable clusters. This is poetic and aggressive, because one and the same movement can mean tender cooperation as well as stressful collapse. In this way, a choreographic fantasy about the incomprehensible connection between neuronal processes and psychological experience is actually achieved. A few nerve fibres twitch – you must be happy.

 

Kölner Rundschau (23.10.2014) Thomas Linden
Creatively sorting the cable clutter
Barbara Fuchs shows her new production “DIS_ORDER”.

No production has ever shown the dance floor of Barnes Crossing in the Wachsfabrik so naked and purist. Barbara Fuchs staged her new production “Dis-Order” directly on the wood. The large surface with its panels is reminiscent of a computer board, an impression reinforced by several cables that, like neurons, lead to small loudspeakers. The latter, like the cables, are constantly repositioned. The dancers (Odile Foehl, Pietro Micci and Ursula Nill) act according to an order that seems inscrutable from the outside. Electricians or floor layers could also be at work here. While this choreography unwinds in apparent utility, the space is filled with Jörg Ritzenhoff’s electro-acoustic compositions, in which birdsong, coughing or humming intersperse. “Dis_Order” marks the finale of the cycle “(Ge)-(Fühl)-(Los)”, which deals with human affects. After a surprising second production, the third part returns to minimalist austerity. The arrangement of the cables on the large surface is not without humour, and the sparing pas de deux by Pietro Micci and Odile Foehl shows a finely honed choreography of intimacy and distance. Barbara Fuchs could have been more generous with this gift to her audience. A little more emotional interference in the controlled storm of neural structures would have given the production even more substance.

 

In the second part of the three-part cycle GE-FÜHL-LOS different artistic views on emotions and their representation are meeting each other. Five artists and four performers devote themselves to the emotions of shame, humility, boredom, vanity, guilt, envy and lust. + – develops aural, physical and verbal emotional worlds, which are brought together in a deliberately heterogeneous held stage experience. These staged parallel worlds of intimacy are meeting and dissociating from each other. It creates a kind of experimental arrangement for the audience empathy.

 

 

TEAM 

Regie/Choregraphie: Barbara Fuchs

Performance: Odile Foehl, Regina Rossi, Ursula Nill, Pietro Micci

Music: Jörg Ritzenhoff

Text: Charlotte Fechner

Stage: Gonzalo Barahona

Light: Horst Mühlberger

Techncian: Wolfgang Pütz

Speaker: Stefan Kraft

Photo: MEYER ORIGINALS

A production of tanzfuchs PRODUKTION/Barbara Fuchs

Sponsored by: Kulturamt der Stadt Köln, Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und Sport des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Fonds Darstellende Künste, Kunststiftung NRW

Co-produced by Barnes Crossing – Freiraum für TanzPerformanceKunst

 

Press quotes:

Thomas Linden, Kölnische Rundschau, October 2013

Eroticism and cool distance

Excellent dance production performed by Barbara Fuchs

[…] The bodies intertwine, the dancers’ attractiveness is consciously played out, and yet the Cologne choreographer always emphasizes the distance between the eyes. Barbara Fuchs finds appropriate images for the intimate and she doses her choreography strictly according to the function of her subject. Nothing is given away here, and at the same time a compact, eventful production is created.

Perhaps the best work that this experienced choreographer has succeeded in doing so far[…]

Klaus Keil, aKT – The theatre newspaper Cologne – November 2013

Self-exposure

aKT production of the month: Choreographer Barbara Fuchs opens up an unusual way of dealing with feelings and moods in her piece “PlusMinus” – and thus puts the audience’s capacity for empathy to the test.

[…] The enthusiastic final applause showed that the “message” had been received. It is only a small area in our brain. But it is responsible for the big emotions: the amygdala, the so-called almond core. In “PlusMinus”, the second part of the three-part dance cycle “GE-FÜHL-LOS”, choreographer Barbara Fuchs challenges the centre of emotions and drives as emphatically as she does consistently. This time feelings such as shame, guilt, humility, vanity, envy and lust are at the centre of the production. A choreographic mammoth task, which is solved by Barbara Fuchs and her team in a content-rich and artistically impressive way […]

 

The first part of the three part cycle “GE-FÜHL-LOS” (“UN-FEEL-ING”), Barbara Fuchs plumbs the depths of the relation between body, sound and affect in the context of intimacy and the public view. By referencing affect, an especially large number of emotional conditions are put on display. In “MOODSWING”, the ensemble deals with the four basic emotions of joy, grief, anger, and fear. This results in a study in movement and sound, combined with EASY music that enhances the abstract nature and detachment of the feelings. The premiere of MOODSWING took place on 14. September 2014 at Barnes Crossing in Cologne.

TEAM 

Artistic direction: Barbara Fuchs

Performance: Barbara Fuchs, Odile Foehl, Marcus Bromski, Regina Rossi

Sound: Jörg Ritzenhoff

Stage design: Barbara Fuchs, Wolfgang Pütz

Lightdesign: Wolfgang Pütz, Barbara Fuchs 

Photo: MEYER ORIGINALS

A Production of tanzfuchs PRODUKTION

Supported by: Kulturamt der Stadt Köln, Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und Sport des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen

Coproduced by Barnes Crossing – Freiraum für TanzPerformanceKunst

 

Press quotes:

Romy Weimann, akt., März 2013

Emotional body
The stage at Barnes Crossing in Wachsfabrik becomes a laboratory: The composition “fadofade” by Jörg Ritzenhoff and the choreography “Moodswing” by Barbara Fuchs examine the sorrow. A mesmerizing installation.

[…] Instead of telling stories Fuchs reasons facial expressions on the basis of stylized pictures: Marcus Bomski cowered on all four legs, animally grunts and gasps the rage out of his body. Regina Rossi entertains herself in humorous swing and dance moves. Sometimes the four dancers jump, wriggle and turn from the left to the right edge of the stage, sometimes they stand in front of the audience snarling and panting and can almost not stop themselves from laughing. No problem: the stage is exactly declared as this – microphones reinforce the public disposition of this experimental emotion-laboratory. It is rarely moving. But it is very much fun. […]

Melanie Suchy, Kölner Stadtanzeiger, February 2013
How emotions are made
For “Moodswing” she collaborated with the composer Jörg Ritzenhoff. This mood-seesaw is based on ancient and baroque notions how emotions are made or influenced – especially by music – the human being is provider or bunker of morales. The body. This one Barbara Fuchs multiplies on the bare stage at Barnes Crossing and by that stresses the impersonality of the idea.

Thomas Linden, Kölner Rundschau, February 2013
The alphabet of emotions
Apparently, Barbara Fuchs does not want to affect in her new dance-production “Moodswing”, which filled the second half of the evening. Her project is the first episode of the cycle “Ge-Fühl-Los” which is structured in three stations. The choreography that directs itself as a performance for voices across long distances, dissects emotions like dust particles. In a distorted acoustic, joy, sorrow, rage and fear are represented in front of the ramp by screams, grunts or gasps. It looks like a spelling out of human sentiments. It is a little scary, a little funny but it can not become dramatically because in the laboratory no stories emerge.
This factual experiment that is supposed to stage unbridled reactions in the form of dance and voice is obviously great fun for the four protagonists (Odile Foehl, Barbara Fuchs, Marcus Bomksi und Regina Rossi). A little wink is allowed in these stylistic finger exercises. It will be interesting how Barbara Fuchs is going to expand and intensify her alphabet of emotions in the second part of the cycle.”

 

In the expedition “BELOW ZERO”, the audience will be taken through an iced up world full of space, sound and images. The team in charge of this research journey plays around the third state of water with associative microcostumes and macrocostumes. How will the medially pressed components of a polar expedition be closely listened to and looked at under a dissecting glass? They will be “zoomed in”, cut, dismantled, distorted, mirrored and isolated from their contexts.

“gaunt and exhausted faces with ice-encrusted beards peered from snow covered clothes. (…) to what our eyes can see, nothing apart snowfields (…) the entire surface of the ocean was covered by a sizzling mass of ice and foam (…) ice moving around (…) the still was overpowering, we were in a dead, iced up world.” (from South with Endurance by Frank Hurley)

BELOW ZERO is an ensemble production by tanzfuchs PRODUKTION and was premiered on 25. November 2011 at Barnes Crossing in the Wachsfabrik.

 

TEAM

Director, Stage: Barbara Fuchs  Sound: Jörg Ritzenhoff
Performer: Kazue Ikeda, Odile Foehl
Lightdesign: Wolfgang Pütz
Voice: Gisela Nohl 

Photo: MEYER ORIGINALS

Pressquotes:

StadtRevue | Tipp

” In research on the project concerning snow and ice, the choreograph Barbara Fuchs began to get interested in Ernest Shackleton who travelled to the South Pole in 1914 together with the bark “Endurance”. Her new piece is called “Below Zero”. Out of historical documented knobs it folds moments and subjects. Narrow and wide: The groups were camping in tents, little houses, below boats and were travelling through endless landscapes. The slipping and sliding. Storms. Frostbiting. Corporeal. “The vicious and the incredible beauty”, so says Fuchs. Odile Foehl and Kazue Ikeda are dancing. Thereto the clanking sound world of composer Jörg Ritzenhoff. “

Klaus Keil, aKT 12 + Choices, Kultur in NRW

Cold shock

[…] In the corner of the great hall it is as the two dancers Odile Foehl and Kazue Ikeda would stick in a crevasse on confined space. The movement-actions are designed for mediating moments of reality but also catching the atmosphere of those moments. In a solo Odile Foehl bends her extremities as if she would want to invade in her own body to defy the cold. Then the dancers trudge through flour and leave behind white footsteps on the stage: Footsteps in the snow. Marine ropes and sailor’s kitbags fly on the stage from the off. Frozen garments are crackling and cracking spreaded and cold and stiff attracted. Thousands of polystyrene chips simulate a snowscape. […]

Thomas Linden, Kölnische Rundschau, 30.11.11

[…] A small room filled with far too many people. Shouts and shots resound from the outside. Then a door opens and the only thing to see is a flawless opaque whiteness. Fog which nearly takes the whole visibility. Two shapes break away from the smoky cotton wool, obviously freezing with chattering teeth …

A sensational beginning: shivering, eerie and with a little bit ironically the staging begins… Solitude and silence, two states which may touch us humans very deeply, are just there when these extreme circumstances of the ice desert are put into pictures or words… Thereto Jörg Ritzenhoff produces an atmospheric sound carpet […]