Raumfahrt – Coaching Reality / 2010
Raumfahrt- Coaching Reality is an interdisciplinary dance and art performance dealing
with the aspects of time and space. The performer and dancer Karen Boesser, the visual
artist Dirk Dietrich Hennig and the musican Ansgar Tappert explore the different
dimensions and perspectives. Surreal images are created and appear in the mist of the
room and remain blurred. The trio deals with subjective perceptions of time and space,
seeking new forms of description in order to perceive reality and to create a poetry.
Raumfahrt- Coaching Reality is a lively and interactive performance between the terms
of the present moment, technology, art and people.
Choreography / Dance:
Karen Boesser
Soundcollage: Ansgar Tappert
Videoart: Dirk Dietrich Hennig
Light-Architect: Gernot Schmiedberger
Coach: Michael Schmidt
Artistic assistant: Shinsaku Yuasa
Performance Places: Forum Freies Theater, Düsseldorf Germany
Sponsor /Funding: Department of Cultural Affairs, Düsseldorf
Coproduction: Forum Freies Theater Düsseldorf, Germany
Production: Karen Boesser
Press review:
From the depths of space / Thomas Hag / Karen Boesser shifts with her dance project
Coaching Reality at FFt, Juta space and perspectives.
Space travel may be quite literally taken by the new piece of the Düsseldorf dancer and
choreographer Karen Boesser. Because it uses the entire surface of the Juta, the
audience is first on benches standing on the stage. The performer even acts as a video
projection in the fog only to appear later on as a real person in the top ranks. However,
what is real here anyway? She uses the emptied ranks for the installation: blue light and
cord separating the space to reinforce the illusion. She explored with circular hip
movements accompanied by the scraping, abrasive electronic music by Ansgar Tappert.
She uses a small stage in front of the stage as playing surface and drooping her upper
body into a new shape creating a two-dimensional surface. Shortly thereafter, she
circles around the benches and looks into the eyes of the audience. The audience
becomes part of the production and a group of people is immersed in the bright light
and must feel observed. Again and again the relations are shifted, when Boesser is lying
on the floor and black surfaces slide over her body and when finally letter seem to flow
from her head. (...) The last part of the 50-minute piece is turning into a satire, where the
artist in the role of the therapist requests the audience to meditate.
Space Coaching Reality / Boris Hovrath
The interdisciplinary dance theater production unite the artistic position of the
Düsseldorf choreographer and dancer Karen Boesser with the musical collages of the
Berlin sound artist Ansgar Tappert, and the video projections of the artist Dirk Dietrich
Hennig from Hanover. In the conglomerate of different disciplines blends the expression
of dance, performance and art as well as the perception of illusion and reality. In a
subtile way Boesser questioned in her production, the roles of the production, the
determination of the stage and the auditorium, the actor and the audience. (..) With the
help of dramatic interruption such as the sudden gleam of the entire theatre space in
working lights and the changes in perspective through reflections of the dancer with
video projections, Raumfahrt- Coaching Reality manages to question the viewing and
listening habits again and again. At the end of the play, Karen Boesser is challenges the
audience with a test by leaving the space available to audience and prepares at the
same time her exit. She invited the audience to trigger a challenge of timelessness to
every visitor only for themselves.
Body of threads: Dance in the FFT / Rheinische Post, 20.02.2010 / Stephanie Becker
The room is dark. Fog appears. Dripping water noises are heard. Through the haze
suddenly a woman appears. She looks with wide-eyed, amazed in the room, turns slowly
around in her axis. Only gradually the viewer recognize that it is not a real person, but a
projection. The real woman appears a short time later at another location. So begins
series - Reality Coaching in the FFT Juta. A danceproject of the performer Karen Bösser,
the visual artist Dirk Dietrich Hennig and the sound artist Ansgar Tappert. The theme is
the exploration of reality, space and time. The audience sits on stage in the Juta, and the
solo dancer (Karen Boesser herself) is dancing. In a spider web hanging system , Bösser
is eager to explore with slow movements the space between the threads. She looks like
a creature from another world. Slowly, she comes down to the groundfloor. She uses
only the upper part of her body to hang over the stage edge in the spot of a headlight. A
sound gently float through the room. This music is mysterious and spherical, the dance
sometimes strange, realized in the game with reality and virtuality of the moment, from
the beginning of the performance. Beautiful is the scene where Bösser is dancing on the
floor playing with projected light forms. (...) It would have been a desire to see more of
the game with reality and illusion, more of the strange movements appearing and more
of this atmospheric sounds.
Photos: Copyright by Dirk Dietrich Henbnig 2010
