The haunting pas de deux: ballet's dark side unleashed

Presented as part of the Freespace Dance 2024 programme of cutting-edge work exploring concepts of time and space, TANZ is an exploration of the limits of dance, the body, the dancers and the audience created by Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger – a leading, visionary figure in contemporary European experimental performance. It was awarded for “Best Performance of the Year” by Theatre Heute and NESTROY Price for Best Direction, and was presented at the prestigious Theatertreffen.

Taking early 19th-century romantic ballet as its starting point, TANZ uses the frame of a classical ballet class – guided by veteran dancer Claire Philippart – to present a critical and challenging look at the cultivation of the female body. As the performers undergo rigorous training in action ballet, the so-called sylphidic studies, they learn how to transfer their skills to a genre of bloody, supernatural spectacle, and use the articulation of the dancer’s body as a tool to penetrate space and gain flight.

Performed by an all-female team of professional dancers, performers and stunt artists, ranging in age from 29 to 62, the acclaimed work merges the rigours of ballet and circus arts, pushing notions of beauty, femininity, decorum and good taste through explicit naked imagery, radical body art and direct audience address.  

Collectively governing the body and mind using techniques of restraint, the performers transform the gross into the sublime in an operatic set up of brutal parodies of established images of excitement found in ballet, dark comedy and pornography.

TANZ is the third part of Holzinger’s trilogy - Recovery, Apollon, TANZ – three works dealing with notions of practice through training of different physical disciplines on stage.

Alongside the performances, Florentina Holzinger leads a workshop on physical and mental training methods on 11 December at 7:30pm. See details here.