IMPROBABLE SCENARIOS
Under this title Katja F.M. Wolf develops from 2007-2010 a series of work on our sensual perception as access to reality, the creativity and the fallacy. Through movement, sound and video experiments Wolf's ensembles explore the interdependence of the conditions of the body and the functions of our minds mining the aesthetic specificities of the questions, the humourous aspects and entertaining qualities.
Your Spin
Your Spin is the last part of the series Improbable Scenarios which endeavors on the performative and poetic quest to research the conditions and coherences of perception, cognition and body-mind. Starting from the idea: as there is no such thing as silence there is no such thing as absolute stillness!
We cannot know how it is not to move. Physical bodies are even in stillness, abuzz with micro-movements of various sorts. While the planet seems to be resting underneath our feet, it racingly spins around its axis, simultaneously revolving around the sun. How complex are therefore supposedly simple actions like walking or turning around one's own axis. The performance for two performers in a soundscape by Loran Delforge and in a video installation and stage design by Monika Pirch addresses the kinetic sense as well as the three-dimensional sense of hearing, and plays with the imagination of the audience. It opens up a monochrome scenery which juggles with perception and deception of spatial conceptions and the subjectivity of colour impressions. The audience feels physically envelopped by imagery and sound for its being seated on stage between the video screens which outline the circumference of a spiral. One of the screens is cinemascopic, the second bends vertically upwards, and a large folded paper object serves simultaneously as third screen in the auditorium.
Everything changes and nothing remains still.
We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.
Heraclitus / Plato
Credits
Concept, choreography, direction: Katja F.M. Wolf
Performance, movement material: Maria Ramos, Ali Kaviani
Video, space: Monika Pirch
Music: Loran Delforge
Dramaturgy: Alexandra Knieps
Light: Gernot Schmiedberger
Technique: German Gruschwitz
Director's assistance: Maike Lautenschuetz
Production assistance: Elisabeth Krefta
Production: Katja F.M. Wolf
Coproduction: Forum Freies Theater
Performances
Wed, March 17 2010 (première)
March 19 / 20 / 25 / 27 2010 at 8 pm.
Venue
Forum Freies Theater / Kammerspiele
Jahnstr. 3
40215 Duesseldorf, Germany
Supported by
Kunststiftung NRW, Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt Duesseldorf, Staatskanzlei NRW, Stiftung Van Meeteren
Thanks to: Frankie and his Duesseldorf studios, Udo and Take It Media, Ansgar Kluge from Technikpool, Britta Lieberknecht, Marianne Pollich, Elisabeth Holder and to the FFT Team
Duration: 50 mins.
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Black & White Hearing
A flicker of the eye, a lid bending, the loss of a sense function, a moment of white. Gaps, which constantly occur, interruptions of the flow of impressions, not even recognized, supplemented unconsciously by our imagination.
Black & White Hearing circles in a playful dialogue of dance and word around the question what escapes us. Portuguese dancer Maria Ramos meets British-Iranian astrophysicist and performer Ali Kaviani.Their spoken and danced explorations comment on the reciprocal effect between direct perception of the presence and what we add and fill in from dreams, experience, expectation and phantasy.
"Katja F.M. Wolf's work is not about smashing effects, but about sensitization [...].
Nothing is blown up here, much remains marked out mysteriously, some moments remind us of a trip through the universe, where we go in search of self-realization and nevertheless meet nothing but ourselves in an a gorilla costume. [...] ' Black & White Hearing' is a quiet piece, as quiet as the fragile music of Beatrice Martini. It requests the public to do exactly what the performers are occupied with - to join the puzzle, to question the senses."
(Thomas Haag, Neue Rhein Zeitung, Feb 9 2009)
"Well-tuned images and sensuous experiences"
(Hans-Christoph Zimmermann, Westdeutsche Zeitung, Feb 6 2009)
Credits
Concept, direction, choreography: Katja F.M. Wolf
Performance, movement material: Maria Ramos, Ali Kaviani
Video: Monika Pirch
Music: Beatrice Martini
Light: Gernot Schmiedberger
Technique: German Gruschwitz
Public talks held after the show on Feb. 7 2009
Thanks to Barbara Koehler for allowing us to integrate her poetry in this piece
additional thanks to Bryan Saner, Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish for their inspiration
Dates
Wed, February 4 2009 (première)
Sat, 7 / Sun 8 / Wed, 11 / Fri, 13 / Sat, 14 February 2009 at 8 pm.
Venue
Forum Freies Theater
Kammerspiele
Jahnstr. 3
D- 40215 Duesseldorf
Production
Katja F.M. Wolf
Coproduction
Forum Freies Theater
Supported by
Minister president of Northrhine-Westfalia, City of Duesseldorf and Stiftung van Meeteren
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» Press review NRZ
» Press review WZ
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» Lightplan
BlackMirrorSolo
With the reduced means of a video projector and a mirror in a dark space the choreographer faces the challenges of the concentrated form of Solo: the meeting with oneself, with the own, the stranger and the other Egos. This mesmerizing immersive piece performed by the choregorapher herself vibrates between playful and magic moments. Through its simple form of a video installation, projected images reflected in a large mirror, the artist brings up for discussion the function of pictures on the basis of her own image - spatial images, body pictures, mirror images, reflecting pictures.
The movement towards oneself becomes the crossing over into another strange world of oscillating attraction. The body appears as landscape, which contains again the body. The public watches the performer, as she watches herself, and becomes thereby part of the unsteadily swaying interrelation of subject and object, put on here. Consolidating the simultanitaety of different points of view in the performance, unexpectedly a sort of publicly dreamed selfportrait unfolds. A piece of live-art produced by easy hand develops a persuasive suction. The choreographer moves in a soundscape of the flemish composer Esther Venrooy, in which musical fields and spoken word interweave like architectural elements in a complex picture landscape which media artist Christian Hiller cares for.
Drafted directly after View from nowhere (premièred in March 2007 at FFT) during the collaboration workshop m&de@dartington, BlackMirrorSolo originated in 2007 in the context of the Improbable Scenarios, in which Wolf deals with the phenomena of perception and examines reciprocal effects of consciousness and movement for poetic and performative approaches.
After each performance there is a live-talk with the audience.
Credits
Concept, direction, text, performance: Katja F.M. Wolf
Video, space, production manager: Christian Hiller
Music: Esther Venrooy
Dramaturgy coach: Bettina Tornau
Dates
Work-in-progress showing:Nov. 7 and 8 2007
March 18 2008 (première)
March 20 / 27 /28 /29 2008
at 8 pm.
Public talks held after the shows
Venue
Forum Freies Theater
Kammerspiele
Jahnstr. 3
D- 40215 Duesseldorf
Production
Katja F.M. Wolf
Coproduction
Forum Freies Theater Duesseldorf
Supported by
Minister president of Northrhine-Westfalia, City of Duesseldorf
Thanks to
m&de@dartington 2007, MIME-Centrum Berlin and Seco-Sign GmbH
» Video trailer
» Press review Rheinische Post
» Press review NRZ
» Press review WZ
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»Space draft
View from Nowhere
Wolf follows the nuances of perception and traces the traps of interpretation. The ensemble consisting of the director herself, dramaturgues Alexandra Dederichs and Kathrin Heide, videographer Monika Pirch and dancer/choreographer Malgven Gerbes, supported by author/ dramaturgue/ performer David Williams and composer Jim Campbell indulge in the question how the personal subjective perception relates to an objective view. What can we say for sure about a situation? Which given moments does our perception miss? How is our perception affected by what we think to know? What can we find out about our contact with reality when we experimentally test the capacities of our perception?
In all her projects Katja reflects the relation between audience and performers by which means she refers back to the relevance of theatre in society. Here again the choreographer breaks up the grand-stand into an open participatory room.
Credits
Choreography, dance, texts: Katja F.M. Wolf, Malgven Gerbes
Concept, direction: Katja F.M. Wolf
Performance, texts: David Williams
Dramaturgy: Alexandra Dederichs, Kathrin Heide
Video: Monika Pirch
Sound design: Jim Campbell, Wolfgang Rixius
Costume design: Hiroaki Kanai
Light design: Gernot Schmiedberger
Stage design: Andreas Mangano
Production assistance: Maike Lautenschuetz
Production by Katja F.M. Wolf in coproduction with FFT
Supported by Art Foundation of NRW, City of Duesseldorf, Foundation van Meeteren
Dates
March 28 2007 FFT Juta (première)
March 29 - 31 2007 FFT Juta
April 4 and 5 2007 Ringlokschuppen Muelheim/Ruhr
Duration ca. 70 mins.
Venue
Forum Freies Theater Juta
Kasernenstr. 6
D- 40213 Duesseldorf
Production
Katja F.M. Wolf
Coproduction
Forum Freies Theater, Ringlokschupen Muelheim an der Ruhr
Supported by
Art Foundation NRW, City of Duesseldorf and Stiftung van Meeteren
» Video trailer
» Press review
» Lightplan