Journey with Artichoke

Loose, light, dreamy: the Folkwang Tanzstudio

WAZ, 10 December 2004
Michael Kohlstadt

The title suggests it: the Folkwang Tanzstudio’s latest work “Artischocke im Silbersee” (An Artichoke in the Silver Lake) takes us on a fantastic journey. And shame on anyone who feels compelled to dive for profundity in this flood of beautiful images.

Contemporary dance rarely presents itself as easygoing and light, as dreamy and self-ironic as it did recently at the auditorium of the Folkwang Hochschule (Folkwang University). Unlike many other new dance creations, this game of colours, shapes and rhythms features no suffering bodies, burning souls or flickering video projections.

Instead we see extravagant costumes (Margit Koch) and subtle lighting: “Artischocke im Silbersee”, let’s admit it, is a feast for the eyes. No, Henrietta Horn, the sensitive choreographer and director of the Folkwang Tanzstudio, does not want to upset us. Maybe she doesn’t even want to tell a story, not a familiar one anyway. For “Artischocke im Silbersee” is pure invention, a snapshot of the imagination: A young woman in a summer dress wearing sunglasses and a bathing cap (shaped like an artichoke).

A curtain of beads glittering like silver, which can be shaped into arabesque columns. Silhouettes in front of a blood-red backdrop swaying their hips to the rhythm of the music. Dancers with long stick-like fingers who perform a wonderful ballet parody. Fabulous creatures moving with feline grace. Accompanied by music which sounds gorgeously smug: Jazz, Samba, Soul and - as if this was the Lonely Heart’s Club Ball - the good old electronic organ. All this is paraded in 60 minutes in front of an audience who cannot get enough of this revue of sometimes almost surreal ideas.

Even more than in her former pieces, Henrietta Horn has united her marked sense for strong image compositions with the immense eloquence of danced narration. The choreography avoids all hackneyed phrases; movements develop organically out of the natural tension of the body. In addition, Henrietta Horn is able to make liberal use of the repertoire of show dance steps, deftly balancing on the thin line separating art and kitsch. Added to this are the masterful skills of the eleven dancers of this first-class company. They are global ambassadors - and certainly not in a museum sense - of the great Folkwang dance tradition, and rightly so.

Aquarium Frolics

ballettanz 11.2004
Jochen Schmidt

There she stands, wearing high heels and a green dress, a scaly bathing cap on her head, right in the middle of the stage aquarium marked by two rows of glittering golden ropes which at first are bunched up to form pillars at the Düsseldorfer Tanzhaus, like a living embodiment of the title of this piece: choreographer Henrietta Horn plays the “artichoke in the silver lake”. She stretches out one hand, twitches a hip and in time this hint of Charleston turns into a merry, slightly stiff-legged solo.

The declared aim of Henrietta Horn’s new piece for the Tanzstudio (Dance Studio) at the Essen Folkwang Hochschule is to avoid “subtle reflection, profound questioning, merciless reckoning”. After years of a rather uptight dance theatre practice, in this piece the theatre is no longer seen as “a place of criticism and reckoning with the human condition” but rather as a “filling station offering joy of life and energy”. So they try to dance merrily to the sound of Hammond organs and jazz music, at times simply to the low clicking of drumsticks and other percussion instruments.

The main burden - if the term “burden” can really be applied in this context - of the one-hour choreography is not born by the choreographer who dances a part which sets occasional solo exclamation marks, but by the ten members, men and women, of the company who wear smart, colourful show costumes designed by Margit Koch. The five women appear mostly in high-heeled stilettos, and all of them have lengthened their fingers by means of pointed extensions, ranging in length from a span to the occasional half-metre: funny rather than dangerous crustaceans swimming steadily faster, with jolting, twitching movements, through an artificial lake whose colours keep changing between greenish blue and reddish.

In the best scene of the piece the dancers set up a miniature stage on stage and turn their enormously extended fingers into puppet legs to perform a brilliant tap dance routine, while right beside this two of the men strike classical poses in a parody of the old ballet style which they have left far behind.

There can be no doubt that “Artichocke in the Silver Lake” is Henrietta Horn’s most relaxed piece so far: sketched lightly and ironically into a dreamlike set (designed by the choreographer herself in cooperation with Reinhard Hubert) that reminds us of the Arabian Nights: half oriental, half Harun al-Rashid’s sea of stories. Henrietta Horn escapes the risk of becoming too shallow by adding new, darker levels that bring strange, maybe even dangerous creatures one would not like to meet in reality whenever the choreography threatens to get blurred and lost in vagueness. In this way, she keeps her dream in a happy balance: light, but not banal, with a touch of mystery.

Impish Refinement Replaces Subtle Reflection

„Artischocke im Silbersee“ (An Artichoke in the Silver Lake) by Henrietta Horn”

tanzjournal 6/04
Dagmar Schenk-Güllich

It’s hard to believe: On stage appears a completely unfamiliar Henrietta Horn: wearing a fashionable green dress, high heels, extra-long fingernails and sunglasses, on her head something resembling a leafy bathing cap. The title of her new piece tells us what this could be - the hint of a four-leaved artichoke bud.

It’s called Artischocke im Silbersee (An Artichoke in the Silver Lake), and it’s far removed from all the dramatic and profound works we’ve seen coming from her - not a trace left of Solo from 1999, that mono-drama full of anxiety, not a trace left of the deeply stirring elements in 2001’s Lakenhal, very little of the minimalism of Auftaucher (2001) or the desperation of her earlier piece Horst. The director of the Folkwang Tanzstudio (Dance Studio) at the Essen Folkwang-Hochschule (Folkwang School) shows us a different side of her personality, a naughty side bubbling over with imagination, gaiety, irony and light humour.

Strings of glass beads are hung in dense rows at the front and back of the stage. When the light hits them they glitter like silver threads. People peer through them; they are moved like waves, occasionally bundled up and once even thrown through the air as dangerous ropes. It is an artificial lake, full of movement and fairy-tale poetry, where the company perform their jerky and twitchy movements, sway and shake their hips loosely, vibrate. All eleven dancers wear long, pointed extensions at the tips of their fingers - some ten centimetres long, others half a metre. This creates a slightly bizarre and highly aesthetic effect, turning the dancers who wear wonderfully light little couture dresses by Margit Koch into funny and exotic aquatic creatures. Henrietta Horn herself performs solo episodes and sets highlights, strikingly impish and ironic. Her dancing - and this is the choreographer we know - is limited to very few, rhythmic and precisely executed movements. She did stay true to her signature style here, even though entertainment and lightness are at the helm: in spite of the high spirits which make her company go wild, infectiously and brilliantly, we feel her intensity of expression and her strict hand.

There is an enchanting intermezzo at the centre of the piece: the dancers kneel on stage, making their extended fingers stalk across the ground as puppet legs performing a tap dance. Next to this we see dancers in long johns parodying classical poses. So we experience a series of ironic, smoothly performed dance scenes following each other. The company are enjoying it, too, that’s quite obvious.