Barbara Fuchs's Latest Posts
BELOW ZERO
“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 […]
Eavesdropping Affair Winkler
“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
(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.”
White Noise
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. […]
it
„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. […]