Ich nicht Ich (2009)

Ballettanz

...[A] harrowing dance piece about multiple "I"s that never come together as one, never begin to flow, always collide in search of a way out of themselves but only ever find second-hand approaches. Handke can be heard through this: "I treated people like things [...] I alienated myself from my own body. I disturbed the eternal order."

Ich nicht Ich (2009)

Tanznetz

"Movement zapping, identity hopping, social contradiction and mobbing through questions of meaning. Although there is still the question of why—in a piece that references Handke—not a word of German is spoken, Chyle manages to pull off a roguish piece chocked full of social and media critical innuendos. This is not least owed to the video projections (by Leonie Weber) on one of the moveable stage elements: an ordinary day at the office. Under the surface—amongst potted plants and cups of tea, during finicky paper-sorting—desire and frustration run rampant."

Ich nicht Ich (2009)

Neue Zeitung für Musik

"Musically, the absolutely acrid-bitter parody is intensified by the music of Bernd Konrad, Patrick Bebelaar and Hand Peter Jahn. The percussive sound accompanies the events that unfold in the worlds above and underneath and simultaneously parodies them through the use of just that: classical music parody. For example, in the number with the drag queen bits of sound made with a cello are heard from afar as Bach's solo sonatas breeze past the spectators’ ear. In "go sit!", the number with the dog, a funeral march is heard. And at the end, in a purposefully not-so-magical biting and ironic number, music created with a garden hose and harmonica is heard as the musicians dressed as white clowns pop out of a trap door. Quintessentially, this production relentlessly plays with norms and formats; and the term ‘cross over’ is much more than just an empty catch phrase."

Re-Inventing Nijinsky (2009)

Ballettanz

Vaslav Nijinsky once wrote: "I am God." "I am the spirit in every human." "I am Vaslav," says the upstanding citizen into the camera while standing at the entrance to the barracks [Karlskaserne Ludwigsburg]. "I am not a wild animal," says a voice on stage where the video artist is working on a small broken-down caravan. Fabian Chyle joins them, plunging head first into the vehicle and sits with a fur hat with hanging dachshund ear covers in the small space drinking tea from a bag. Suddenly, steam emerges from between his legs, filling up the caravan and pouring out the windows. Panic-stricken, Fabian Chyle tumbles out of the caravan and beings to dance on the red carpet with abrupt and hectic arm movements constantly retracing the same path back and forth. He dances toward a spotlight, chasing but never reaching it: following Nijinsky's tracks. Chyle is so ridiculous and pathetic it makes you want to cry—a fantastic performer somewhere between boyishly daft and dead serious.

Re-Inventing Nijinsky (2009)

Stuttgarter Zeitung

With sharp, whipping arm movements Chyle draws his dance in the space, allowing it to spread like a disease and fully take over the body.

Territorial Inbalance (2008)

Ballettanz

Territorial imbalance turns out to be a game with prejudices, aimed to irritate and allow the audience to take part in a disoriented search for civilization, happiness and order in a world where conventional logic, response and the resulting consequences remain utterly incomprehensible.

Territorial Inbalance (2008)

Stuttgarter Zeitung

Irritating and simulating a sort of mini trauma in the spectators’ heads is part of the plan. And it works. Bit by bit it becomes clear that we are about to experience exactly that: troubled communication, disregarding all the rules of initiation and reactions, a territorial imbalance and a search for stability in a topsy-turvy world, for happy pills and for signs of civilization. And although the traumatized creatures hardly have a clue of what to do with their picnic plates in the very beginning, they do discover a new form of forward motion using them.

Nowhere noverre

ballett international

'Nowhere Noverre'
FABIAN CHYLE

While Marco Goecke at Stuttgarter Ballett fully concentrates on the dancer's body and its immense possibilities of expression, his colleague from Stuttgart's independent scene rather makes it disappear. 'Multiple choice' is what Fabian Chyle calls his three-year project that is conceived as a 'transfer of ideas, concepts and images into other contexts' – and this transfer takes to a large part place in visionary form, i.e. in virtual form on the Internet.

This does not apply to 'nowhere noverre', the concluding dance piece whose stage action is arranged in such a manner that 'seemingly equal things reshape into something new through minor shifts.' After all, 'the political and omnipresent' question at issue is 'how the body behaves in a continuously re-contextualised environment.' Not hard pressed for an answer, Fabian Chyle and his Viennese dramaturgist Marty Huber in her role as 'thinker' (event program) do admit that 'stagnation and boundless yearning for utopia can be close together' here. Thus, even failure becomes deserving of sympathy.

There can be no talk of failure in the context of 'nowhere noverre' though, even if the short evening does seem slightly drawn out. Time and again, Chyle 'leaves' through his story, and with each turn of the mobile Spanish walls the young choreographer announces another change of perspective and projection: At times, Claudia Sanoner, Sven Gettkant and Jaap Flier act on their own, at other times they come together, while this does not mean that doing so will result in an 'interlinking of different languages of dance.' Without an actual profile, the three different types of movement fail to position these three dancers in such a way as to make them exchangeable like a jacket or a pair of pants. This does happen once in 'nowhere noverre'. But the functional opposition here is rather the contrast between old and young: confronted with an artistic heavyweight, the 72-year old founding member of the NDT, Sven Gettkant has a hard time. Flier's charisma is impervious to the passage of time, whereas Gettkant's expressive repertoire appears limited.

This may have been part of the choreographer's intention, whose references to the reformist efforts of Jean-Georges Noverre remain indirect at best. There is no ballet en action. To say nothing of any kind of passion. Instead, we get an intellectual 'dance piece' reduced to abstract patterns of movement – and which nonetheless is accompanied by music that does move its audience. Truly a genius at work, Nikola Lutz 'blows up' the compositions of Thierry de Mey as adapted by Oliver Prechtl, to intimidating size. It leaves little space for the dance. None at all for Noverre. It is almost with resignation that Chyle has the piece end as sand pours from the stretched out hands of the dancers: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Hartmut Regitz / ballet-tanz, 32-33, December 2006

Nowhere Noverre

Stuttgarter Nachrichten

The Migrant Generation

Fabian Chyle's latest choreography seems to have very little in common with the dramatic acted ballet of a Jean-Georges Noverre. In vain you will search this last stop of the 'Multiple Choice' performance series staged in Stuttgart for patent passion, for a homogenous language of dance, to say nothing of consistent plot narration. And yet, this work with its programmatic title 'nowhere noverre' addresses precisely these handed-down values, places the dance itself at the centre of the moving discussion, which turns—within the confines of this bracket—to timeless subjects.

Old and young, man and woman, loneliness and common ground. Featuring young Sven Gettkant, in his twenties, Claudia Senoner, born in 1964, and the 72-year-old Jaap Flier, co-founder of the Nederlands Dans Theater, the productions puts three generations on stage, and at the same time, three migrants crossing the boundaries between dance styles. Universal figures take the place of concrete individuals, developing flows of movement from a classic ballet position that traverse the history of the dance, from court-style ballet to standard dancing all the way to street dance.
Initially, each of them is by him- or herself on a tripartite stage. Two large-format mobile walls partition these spaces. Depending on position and projection, these expanses serve as paper wall or as window, as mirror or as distorted reflection. At times, the dancers consciously turn these wheels of fortune, while at other times, they resign themselves fatalistically to their inherent dynamic as controlled by Fabian Chyle, visit their contemporaries in a temporary togetherness that often starts off stereotypically, then sounds the true complexity in the course of a dialectically danced argumentation accompanied by the saxophone sounds of Nikola Lutz. Oppositions move imperceptibly. Behind semi-transparent textiles, a young couple as societal convention in matching apparel; in the foreground, Jaap Flier in uncivilised nudity on all fours.

And where is Noverre? There are intermittent flashes, yet the drama is created by Fabian Chyle in an abstract way, not along the lines of concrete plot progression as demanded by dance theoretician Noverre. Nonetheless, the production ends as a reminiscence to the former Stuttgart dance master in the form of a contemplative tableau. Their backs to the audience, their right hands stretched out, the three dancers silently pour sand onto the stage.

Patricia Fleischmann / Stuttgarter Nachrichten, September 29th, 2006

Nowhere Noverre

Stuttgarter Zeitung

Fabian Chyle's Noverre Performance at Theaterhaus

Like a conductor of space, Fabian Chyle puts the two revolving screens on the dance floor into motions, keeps creating new spatial situations for, and perspective on, his three dancers. 'nowhere noverre' the final stage creation in the Multiple Choice series by the Stuttgart-based choreographer that now had its premiere at Theaterhaus, has very little in common with the eruptive body theatre so familiar from Chyle’s past performances. While more subdued in its expression and its form of movement, this dance production is of equal intensity.

Which is partially due to the charismatic personalities of the dancers with whom Chyle works here, representing three different generations. Departing from the vocabulary of ballet and from contemporary style, the 72-year-old Jaap Flier, a founding member of the Nederlands Dans Theater, Claudia Senoner (42), and the 28-year-old Sven Gettkant embark on a quest for an individual, complementary expression of the body, torn between rules and freedom, marked by their age and experience.

The writings of ballet reformer Jean-Georges Noverre form the intellectual point of reference for Chyle’s production. But the impact of this dance research unfolds in and of itself, even without the interaction with the, by all means interesting, dramatic superstructure of the performance, as it is reflected in video projections (by Alexander Schmidt) and accompanied by live saxophone (played by Nikola Lutz). In the impressive closing image, sand is pouring from the dancers' hands, commemorative of an hour glass. Not least, it is time that imposes limits on abilities of the human body.

Claudia Gass / Stuttgarter Zeitung, September 29th, 2006