“Eavesdropping affair Winkler” is a fictional tone and body portrait of a dancer. The – apparent – target person of the eavesdropping is the dancer Erika Winkler. She moves in an acoustically-theatrical space that oscillates between intimacy and public. The audience get a bead on the lead actress not “only” visually but also acoustically.

The Eavesdropping affair is determined by the actors: Erika Winkler as overheard – Barbara Fuchs and Jörg Ritzenhoff as eavesdroppers – the audience as the sound voyeuristic.

The coordinates of space, acoustics and identities are moved by the actors in the course of the Eavesdropping affair. The ratio of voice, body sounds and identity is explored through alienation and blending of documentary and fictional (sound and movement) material, mixed and placed in new relationships.

In the end remains the question: Who is saving whom under surveillance, eavesdropping or staged? Was the audience sound voyeuristic or only a witness in planning an Eavesdropping affair, of it is not clear to whom it concerns …? Maybe Google can help us?

The premiere of “Evesdropping affair” took place on 22. October 2010 at Barnes Crossing, Cologne.

TEAM

Concept & Idea: Jörg Ritzenhoff/ Barbara Fuchs
Leading Actor: Erika Winkler
Direction/ Choreography: Barbara Fuchs
Sound & Music: Jörg Ritzenhoff

Photo: Wolfgang Weimer

“Eavesdropping affair Winkler” is a tanzfuchs PRODUKTION is coproduced by Barnes Crossing, Cologne and with the support of the Summerresidency-programm of the tanzhaus nrw, Düsseldorf.
Supported by Kulturamt der Stadt Köln, Ministerpräsidenten des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Förderprogramm der Sparkasse KölnBonn, SK Stiftung.

Press Quotes:

Thomas Linden, Kölnische Rundschau, 29.10.2010

[…] Jörg Ritzenhoff and Barbara Fuchs deliver an encouraging experimental set-up. They lead this experimental set-up with a trace that can open new artistic spaces in dance. The acoustic as a part of the body is a full fascination. […]

Nicole Strecker. Kölnerstadtanzeiger, 26.10.2010

[…] Eavesdropping affair Winkler” by the choreograph Barbara Fuchs and the composer Jörg Ritzenhoff is a careful listening of space and body sounds. It is grandiose how the sounds from Ritzenhoff’s sound- concept creep into the room, how a whistling can be reinforced by the curved microphones placed in the air in a way that it sounds as if there was a hurricane above the audience. With admirable but also cautiously exhausting consistency, the three artists give us an idea, with their bugging and through the listening, of the personality injuries. […]

(S)CRAP is the fifth collaboration between the composer Ritzenhoff and the choreographer Fuchs. With SCRAP they follow a new approach to their working relationship. The composer Ritzenhoff and the chorographer Fuchs reverse their roles: he dances and she makes music – a spirited attempt in which the possibility of failure is calculated.

(S)CRAP is a dance and music intervention about the relation of sound and movement, dilettantism and virtuosity.

(S)CRAP uses analogue sound technology from the last century. Crackling vinyl records, Toy-Pianos made out of plastic or yellowed cassette recorders act as witnesses of the permanent transformation of professional standards. 

The premiere of “(S)CRAP” took place on 4. September 2009 at Barnes Crossing.

Team

Performance, Music, Stage: Barbara Fuchs, Jörg Ritzenhoff

Technician: Marco Wehrspann, Wolfgang Wehlau

Costume: Yvonne Stammsen, Barbara Fuchs

Photo: Wolfgang Weimer

(S)CRAP is a tanzfuchs Produktion, coproduced by Choreografen Netzwerk BARNES CROSSING, supported by: Stadt Köln, Ministerpräsident des Landes NRW, Kunststiftung NRW, Fonds Darstellende Künste.

Press Quotes:

Thomas Linden, Kölnische Rundschau

„(S)CRAP is recommended for anyone who thinks ballet is boring. There is music, a female body from unexpected angles, and a man playfully demonstrates the male fascination for technology – there is even a choroegraphy for screws…)

(S)CRAP is a mix of choreography and performance art – full of poetic charm that never seems too kitschy because spontaneity and the fun to experiment with sound and movement lead the way. „Schrott“ has intelligence and imagination, using dance to let the world of yesterday grab you one more exciting time.”

Nicole Strecker, Kölner Stadtanzeiger

[…] They have screws and springs dancing instead of ballerinas, and if you listen carefully, then you will find music hidden deep in the noise of old radios – just the hint of a melody, an echo of life in a piece of junk equipment […]

Christina-Maria Purkert, aKt 06, Kölner Theaterzeitung

“(S)CRAP is an ironic performance evening, without nostalgia and sentimentality, that rejects the technology of the old avant garde without replacing it with new technology. However, the aesthetic of performance art (that in the 60s and 70s freed itself from the expected sounds, images and stage direction) is referred to in Schrott in such a way that the evening doesn’t go beyond it. But that it not what it wanted to do anyway. By making their own rules from the Danish dogma cinema, Fuchs/Ritzenhoff let us know that with the simplest technical means, the pristine moment is presented.”

Barbara Fuchs follows Virilio’s thesis and translates them into dance. She asks: what happens when bodies are perpetually in motion? Does the addition of all possible movements produce a freezing point, just like the sum of all audible frequencies produces a voiceless sound?

Four dancers and the composer/live electronic technician Jörg Ritzenhoff explore chaos, the constant movement of the body and the sounds. Their research gives the ability to experience simultaneity as well as the tension which is included in motionless pauses. They no longer look for content but they are themselves the content of the performance. Their “on top of each other”-selves, their penetration and their isolation design a fugitive choreography. The performance literally roars through the audience.

The premiere of “White noise” took place on 11 Feburary 2009 at Barnes Crossing, Cologne.

TEAM

Choreography, Stage, Light: Barbara Fuchs
Live-Electronic: Jörg Ritzenhoff
Choreography, Dance: Erika Winkler, Odile Foehl, Jenifer Hoernemann, Barbara Fuchs

Photo: Wolfgang Weimer

Supported by Kulturamt of the City Cologne, Ministerpräsidenten of Landes NRW, der SK Stiftung Kultur and coproduced by Choreographer-Network BARNES CROSSING.

Press-Quotes

Dorothea Marcus, akt. 02.04.2009
[…] In “The white noise“, a piece by Barbara Fuchs, which constitutes a “walkable dance sculpture”, the spectators are placed on chairs in the middle of the stage. The light goes out; a babble of voices soars from Dictaphones which are installed on the walls. Four dancers, who are dressed all in black, are winding through chair-isles, contorting themselves through spectator’s feet and narrow stools. The electronic tangle arises to a boom, to a stamping engine and mechanical sound of the sea. Nature or machine? Again and again both blurs throughout the 40 minutes. Meanwhile the electronic-musician Jörg Ritzenhoff, who is live in attendance, drafts stark and sublime sound-worlds. The dancers mutually infuse their bodies, climb on the others in pairs of two, take themselves in possession for a few seconds – you have rarely seen such exciting motion inventions. On a high dancing level they chase through the room, every dancer has several soli. Finally they lead, drag, bully the spectators from their chairs; they marginalize them to the edge of the stage and dispose their bags and jackets. In the end, one of the dancers lies between the reversed chair legs that look like spikes of a sea urchin or like a black reed field. […]

Hans-Christoph Zimmermann, Bonner General Anzeiger – 19th of May 2009
Convincing performances at dance-festival in Bonn
Gudrun Lange, Samir Akika and Barbara Fuchs at “Beueler Brotfabrik”
by Hans-Christoph Zimmermann
…
The 45-minutes dance night of Barbara Fuchs “The white noise” finished the stand row “Bonner Gastspielreihe” in the theatre at the ballroom in Bonn. 35 spectators are sitting on stools on the white dance-carpet. Four dancers are winding through them and the chair-legs, measuring distances with their spreaded arms and legs and appraising close- and far-relations. While the powerful sound-music of Jörg Ritzenhoff is playing, the four dancers are working their way to the vertical direction.
Intertwined, they grow to laokoonesk figures, roaming through the arms of the immobilized spectators and – by this – overcharging their cognitive abilities. Before them, on the side, behind them – everywhere new impressions are lurking which constantly demand new decisions of perception and adaptive responsiveness. Finally the spectators are conducted to the edge of the stage and now see the occurrence from their accustomed manner. A choreography which captivates by its sensual presence and density.

Nicole Strecker, Barnes Crossing: two premiers at Wachsfabrik
[…] It is the concern of Barbara Fuchs to show our primal fear of missing something, this demanding simultaneity of events. She does not serve this feeling with a flat and overflowed dramaturgy but analyses it in an abstract. The composer Ritzenhoff, live in attendance, mixes the sounds of our stressful society in a sublime manner – wind turbines, jabbering TV, highway noise -, whereas the choreography connotes mainly the malaise of the own body: The dancers shake their hands as if they would want to chip off a sticky mass. Then a shiver runs through them as if they would suffer from a continuous goose bumps attack. Particularly impressive are the rangy-angular impulses of Erika Winkler in this successful first ensemble work by Barbara Fuchs who got her aesthetical pendant in the second part of the evening: “Mrs. K.” represented by Suna Göncü. […]

„Where do you want to live?” “In the house of Hansel and Gretel.” “ What is your greatest joy?” “When my cats sing for me.”  “Which characteristics do you appreciate in a man?” “Female.” “ In  a woman?” “Male.” “ What do you want to be?” “ A white tiger.”(Interview with Leonor Fini)

Intersexuality, the third sex: A search for identity. It is neither he nor she. Neither masculine nor feminine. Neither nor or as well as? The neutrum, the neutral. What form does it take? By disguising the multicolored or illustrating its colorfulness? Is it the undetermined, the hidden; the passive? The androgynous, a picture puzzle in which one searches for masculinity and femininity? It is between the worlds. It exists somewhere between man and woman, between old and young, beautiful and ugly, black and white, dead or alive. Nominated for the Cologne dance award 2008 this solo uses 1500 post-its on the stage floor to convey the key ideas and to investigate “featurelessness” thereby exposing haunting physicality realities.

„It“ is the fourth solo-work choreographed by Barbara Fuchs. Her work („double-exposed“, „VIA“ and „tanztat“) has been nominated for and awarded various dance and theatre prizes.

The Premiere of “it – solo for one body” took place on 16. February 2008 in Cologne.

TEAM

Dance, Choreography, Stage Design: Barbara Fuchs

Music: Jörg Ritzenhoff

Light Design: Horst Mühlberger

Photo: Lucia Lommel

Founded by: Kulturamt der Stadt Köln and Ministerpräsidenten des Landes NRW, Coproduced by Choreographen-Netzwerk BARNES CROSSING.

Press quotes:

Honored with the Jury- and audience-award of the international SoloDuoFestival 2010, Budapest, Hungary

Report of the Jury:

Barbara Fuchs opened a door to our own imaginations. The skirt as the only stage prop was used in a most appropriate way. Through the lines of her body and her thoughts she gave a present to us in the form of compact and sensitive pictures of the human being. The performer could create the most beautiful shapes with her simplicity and could take us over to obvious unknown places.

The dancer/choreographer’s precision is very impressive. She retains an aesthetic control and quiet humour. In searching for the limits of identity there is an erotic note, in the mature manner in which the possibilities are explored in which the body can withdraw itself from any definition.

Thomas Linden, Kölner Rundschau, 23.02.2008

[…] This is very impressive, because it is worked with great precision, and yet aesthetic control and quiet humour go together beautifully. In the end, this dance contains an erotic touch on the boundaries of identity: through the maturity with which the possibilities are explored to remove the body from all definitions that try to define it. […]

“Paths are created by walking them”. (Franz Kafka).

Scenic dance miniatures by Barbara Fuchs, Ilona Pászthy and Suna Göncü.

VIA is the first result of the Barnes Bridge project series of the Barnes Crossing choreographers’ network. The choreographers Barbara Fuchs, Ilona Pászthy and Suna Göncü embark on their individual search for different layers of walking. The idea of the Barnes Bridge project is to invite artists from other disciplines to work on a common theme on an equal footing with the choreographers. This time the artist Ruth Prangen could be won for the stage design and the electronic scenography.

The three scenic dance miniatures thus created illuminate the spectrum from physis to metaphysis of the path in a very personal way.

VIA I, a dance miniature by Barbara Fuchs, illuminates the physis of the path. A metaphorical feat of strength of a being that is making its way and encounters an obstacle.

Premiere 12.05.07 as part of the festival Tanz NRW 07 at the Studiobühne Cologne.

TEAM

Choreography & Dance: Barbara Fuchs
Stage: Ruth Prangen
Music: Markus Reyhani
Costumes: Sabine Kreiter
Light: Jürgen Kapitein
Dramaturgy: Koni Hanft
Production Management: Gustavo Fijalkow

Photo: Jürgen Laubhold

A production from Barnes Crossing Choreographer-Network 

Supported by Ministerpräsidenten des Landes Nordrhein Westfalen, Kunststiftung NRW, SK Stiftung Kultur Förderprogramm, Koehler Papier Group

Press-Quotes

NICOLE STRECKER, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger 13.05.07

Switched on at last
Between the familiar and the new, many pleasant things happened in Cologne.

“I’m kind of on standby,” murmurs a dancer in Parisa Karimi’s dance film “Zwischenwelten”. Cologne’s independent dance scene also feels like it’s on “standby” again and again. And finally the city has “switched on” and given its busy scene a festival: “Tanz NRW 07” was actually a cooperation with six other cities, but Cologne took a special route and created its festival within the festival. Event followed event, one squeezed into sold-out venues, encountered the familiar and the completely new.

Take “Via”, for example. The choreographers’ collective Barnes Crossing had been quiet recently, but “Via” showed that they had quietly developed further, in some cases considerably. At the start of the three-part production, Barbara Fuchs smoked across the stage as if various insects had entered into a symbiosis in her body – a feat of strength that she celebrated with incredible brilliance. With Ilona Pászthy, the effort continued in a completely different way: with her, one falls into a nightmare: running, running, running – and yet never moving from the spot. Her arms row, her upper body is tense, but her legs stick to the floor as if paralysed.

The premiere of “2307,5” took place on 3. November 2006 at the Orangerie Theatre in Cologne.

TEAM

Concept and Idea: Barbara Fuchs
Choreography and Dance: Erika Winkler and Barbara Fuchs
Music: Ritzenhoff
Video, Light: Horst Mühlberger
Stage, Light: Marco Wehrspann
Costumes: Sabine Kreiter
Supervision: Carla de Andrade Hurst
Dramaturgy: Odile Foehl

Photo: Lucia Lommel

Co-production: Barnes Crossing | Choreographers Network and Consol Theater, Gelsenkirchen

Press quotes:

Nicole Strecker, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 07.11.2006

[…] Universe, space. We’re at stardate 2307.5 – and let’s see what the dance is all about at this point: Two creatures lie on the ground, a strip of light passes over them like a radar screen or a photocopier. When the two creatures signal life, they do so with the reduction of two unicellular organisms. In fact, “piece 2307.5”, the new choreography by Barbara Fuchs, is like looking into a microscope over long distances. Two strikingly long bodies that gently slide across the floor until they come to rest on top of each other. When they perform more complex movements, they always somehow get it wrong: joints shift in irritating directions, elbows grow out between the backs of the knees – the whole body seems to be wrongly constructed. Barbara Fuchs herself and the impressive dancer Erika Winkler crawl around as futuristic bodies in this dance science fiction. Marco Wehrspann’s light creates fantastic moods: sometimes a green-blue wafting as if on the ocean floor, sometimes bright red laser structures that only show the outlines of the bodies. Constant metamorphoses in a precisely timed dance installation in which high-tech, nature and science combine in a very peculiar way. […]

Christina Grolmuss, CRITIC CAMPUS WEB 05.11.2006

Ouantenphysik – abstract and innovative brought on stage

TanzKonkret promises a journey through the galaxies in the Orangery

“With “Stück 2307,5 – eine Tanz-Fiktion” ends a remarkable trilogy that deals with the fusion of dance and film genres. This dance utopia, created by director and dancer Barbara Fuchs, is about the arduous journey of two subatomic particles that have to assert themselves against gigantic gravitational waves and quivering ion storms in the endless tangle of the universe. They have to endure agonizing light years of danger until they find the long awaited way out in a narrow subspace tunnel.”