”co>labs is a laboratory in which, using voice and body, fascinating insights into the behaviour and reactions of human-beings when facing extreme situations can be gleaned.“
Nürnberger Zeitung
”(...) The battle for one’s own survival is also the battle for one’s own basis of existence. The means human beings use in this battle is consequently demonstrated in this thoroughly worth-seeing dance composition by Beate Höhn and her ensemble.“
Karin von Matuschka, review of Golden Rules, Nürnberger Zeitung – 08.12.18
”(...) with all the existential questions which Paradise 3.0 touches on, this production captivates with such charm and fantasy and a brilliant crossover of artistic disciplines, that one can only wish that there will be a 4.0 version.“
Regina Urban, review of Paradise 3.0, Nürnberger Nachrichten – January 2018
Beate Höhn
co>labs dance/performance
Beate Höhn is a freelance choreographer and co-founder of the dance and performance collective co>labs*.
With co>labs she creates productions which are concerned with intercultural and poltical themes. In co-operation with an ever-changing trans-national ensemble, she explores in her works her deep-seated artistic and personal interest in other cultures, ways of thinking and social structures.
In co>labs‘ productions one can literally feel the pleasure had in pushing back the borders between the artistic disciplines, while at the same time the courage and risk-taking attitude taken when facing the unknown determine the discursive content. co>labs acts as a precursor, paving and lighting up the way into the unknown, while sharing its vision of new forms of society, which are marked by the common good, individual freedom and social participation. This results in the creation of unusual aesthetic forms and a novel, individual theatre language.
* co>labs was founded in 1999 by the choreographer, Beate Höhn, and the director, Arne Forke. Beate Höhn works in co-operation with Tafelhalle Nuremberg as a permanent production house, and has worked with international partners in Portugal, Austria, Estonia and Switzerland and with support from the Goethe Institute in Iran, Lebanon, Siberia and Mexico. Under the aegis of Tanzpartner she leads around 10 projects yearly for children and young people, Her success in combining educational and artistic concepts was rewarded in 2008, 2009 and 2010 with the prize „Children of Olympus“ (Award of the Federal Cultural Foundation and the Deutsche Bank, Berlin). co>labs received, among other accolades, the Cultural Development Prize of the City of Nuremberg, the Jury Prize at the Bavarian Theatre Days and a recognition as having produced one of the most influential works in German-speaking theatre, From 2015 – 2018 Beate Höhn and co>labs received the 3 year Impulse Grant from the City of Nuremberg for performative research into forms of co-existence without borders.
www.colabs.de
CURRENT PRODUCTIONS
Wer lebt, der lügt (He who lives, lies)
An installative dance performance in alternative worlds
Premiere: January 2024 Tafelhalle Nuremberg
Fake news, fake profiles and fake products, lies, rumours and conspiracies; lying seems to be ever more present in our lives. A chaos of different narrative strands is condensing and the longing for clarity, security and order is visibly growing. With the dance performance "Wer lebt, der lügt", co>labs ventures into the centre of lies and half-truths and tries to draw them out with uncomfortable questions such as: "Is fake always bad and the truth always good? Where is the line between acceptable and unacceptable lies?
Alternative worlds will be created in collaboration with artists and students from the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. The aim is to analyse the strategies of lies in an essayistic way and playfully get to the bottom of the construct of truth.
A co-production with the Tafelhalle Nürnberg, with the kind support of the Tanzzentrale der Region Nürnberg e. V. and the Kulturamt der Stadt Fürth, sponsored by the City of Nuremberg, the Hehl Foundation and the Kulturstiftung der Sparkasse. This project is made possible by the Bavarian State Association for Contemporary Dance (BLZT) with funds from the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts.
Archive
Die Welt danach (The world thereafter)
An immersive, performative dance and installation project
Premiere: March 2022 I Katharinenruine Nuremberg
Has the pandemic alienated me from myself and where has it led me? Are we still suffering too little to be in solidarity? Could serenity be the tool for a better world "afterwards"?
Western society in particular cannot simply return to the status quo of the past after the coronavirus pandemic. A state has emerged that we could never have imagined, opinions that had been bubbling under the surface for a long time and tearing our society apart have become audible. The world afterwards will be a different one, but which one? Touch in all its facets is the centre of our artistic considerations, because that is the core of theatre and the possible essence of a new community. With an interdisciplinary cast of dancers, performers, visual artists, theorists and philosophers and using the means of immersive theatre, in this production we examine what kind of society will be left, how it can find itself again and ask questions about our sense of solidarity and about possible forms of interaction in a future democratic society.
The project is a co-production with the Tafelhalle in the KunstKulturQuartier, with the kind support of the Tanzzentrale der Region Nürnberg e. V., and is funded by the City of Nuremberg. This project is made possible by the Bavarian State Association for Contemporary Dance (BLZT) with funds from the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts and the Cultural Foundation of the Sparkasse Nürnberg. The concept development took place as part of the Neustart Kultur Stepping Out concept funding programme. Supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK - STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR initiative, dance aid programme.
NUR MUT – eine Häutung
(BE BRAVE – a skinning)
Racism in the context of „white“ fantasies of omnipotence
Premiere: July 2020 I Tafelhalle Nuremberg
The performative installation encourages us to give ourselves a grilling, highlighted by the rise of the current global movement against racism. Four dancers portray a pack of human beings, in settings which sometimes remind us of situation comedy, at others are laden with aggression. Faced by the insistent demand to finally take notice, they are forced to work through their own prejudices. Which personal and social forces arouse anger when racism is the subject matter?
A co-production with the Tafelhalle Nuremberg in Kunstkulturquartier supported by Tanzzentrale of the Nuremberg Region; financially supported by the City of Nuremberg, by the Bavarian Association for Contemporary Dance (BLZT) with funds from the Bavarian Ministery for Science and Culture, the Art and Cultural Foundation of the Nürnberger Nachrichten and the Application Office for City of Culture N2025.
GOLDEN RULES - a survival experience
How everything stays the same when it never became something
Premiere: December 2018 I Tafelhalle Nuremberg
co>labs examines in Golden Rules the inner processes of people who dedicate themselves to radicalism in all its many guises. The project confronts the themes of border transgression, the tolerability of pain, the area below the belt, the endurance of diffamation and degradation, and the fear of the unknown. The starting point is informed by snapshots of current social behaviour and a longing for virtue, decency, humbleness and empathy.
A co-production with the Tafelhalle Nuremberg in Kunstkulturquartier supported by Tanzzentrale of the Nuremberg Region; financially supported by the City of Nuremberg, by the Bavarian Association for Contemporary Dance (BLZT) with funds from the Bavarian Ministery for Science and Culture, the Art and Cultural Foundation of the Nürnberger Nachrichten and the Cultural Foundation of the Sparkasse Nuremberg.
