A rub of rubber stuff
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| © Meyer Originals |
Freitag was the occasion to discover
a whole rubber universe in the Luaga und Losna festival in Feldkirch with the
work of Barbara Fuchs who directs Odile Foehl, an elastic girl, into a world of
rubber thing for children over 3 years old.
A universe to create
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| © Meyer Originals |
Barbara Fuchs and her company
Tanzfuchs like working from material like they did before with plastic, food
etc. All their work consist to find all the possibilities of a material and try
to combine them to create a world on stage. This time the world is built with
rubber rings and inner tubes and Odile Foehl have to evolve on it and with it.
At the same time she’s awakening herself, she’s modelling this world, she
touches it, she plays with it, she experiments it, like children do when they
find a new object to play with. All the performance is based on the elasticity
of the dancer, she’s kind of a robber girl moving her body around and on those
inner tubes or rubber rings that they find in a rubbish dump and rehabilitate
for this show.
The performance is an hymn to
creativity, it offers the right to dream, to build thing, to let our
imagination live, we can be whoever we want on, the only limit is our mind.
Children love telling themselves story, playing with stuff and give them new
abilities because mostly they ignore the purpose of the objects they have in
hands. In that way, the show is really a success because we can clearly see how
children imagination works, and they can reflect themselves on this world of
unlimited possibilities. The proof comes when they go up on stage at the end of
the play, they’re playing, building new scenes in a magnificent turmoil. In a
way, it was almost more interesting to see children acting with the rubber
stuff than to see the show.
An exhibition of performances
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| © Meyer Originals |
It could be a little hard to say it
but let us explain why we feel this way. When the children came on stage, there
was some fresh air, some spontaneity that we couldn’t find on the show. All the
scenes were well prepared but not so well orchestrated, the transitions between
one picture to another weren’t so relevant so it breaks the dynamic created by
the first performance. It was almost like if when she saw something on stage,
she has to go on it and try it to see how it works and what she can do with it,
and that’s all. We assist to a juxtaposition of pictures without a link except
the material and the way of working the material. The proposition seems more
like a sculptor work than an theatre work, that’s why this performance could be
considered as an exhibition of some way of moving around some rubber stuffs but
not with the poetry needed to be a complete play. Here the poetry could have
born with the story of this girl discovering a world full of rubber objects but
it’s missing something, maybe the music wasn’t used enough. There are two
musical moments in the show where something more happens. We finally get
touched as an adult because the music brings some poetry, more imagination,
meanwhile the other moments, even if there is some sound produced by the moves
of the inner tube or rubber rings, seem frozen and only here to show us what we
can do with this material and that’s all. But even if it works on children we
think it’s not enough for an adult audience however, for us, a good play for
children have to be for the whole family and if it’s true that as an adult we
are enjoying discovering all the possibilities that this material offers, we
have more the impression to be at a museum than in a theatre. We saw a princess,
a magician, a pit, a boat, some lanterns, some houses or some migrant’s scenes
but we don’t find the poetry of it or the purpose to put it on stage except to
show that it exists a lot of way of thinking an object. Once we understand the
principle it’s a little bored even if the performance is on a higher level and
propose some interesting reflexions, but those reflexions are more suitable in
a material museum than on stage.
This performance is a good
introduction to let the children understand how the imagination can work, and
for sure this performance opens a window to a world of building and
possibilities. If the show gives them the opportunity to explore new things,
maybe it could have been better if the poetry can be more present and the narrative
a little deeper than a child playing with rubber stuff.
Jérémy Engler, from L'Envolée Culturelle
