Florentina Holzinger: Control over your own body

She is considered the feminist figurehead of the dance scene. But Florentina Holzinger does not want to be a moral apostle.

It went quickly. In 2011 you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into when you went to a piece by Florentina Holzinger. Apart from the title. “No applause for shit” was praised by the critics for its “pure greatness” and “artistic daredevil” and marks the starting point of a steep ascent that made the intrepid Viennese the feminist figurehead of the Austrian dance scene. In her unconventional pieces, she knows no reservations: classical dance meets martial arts, stunts that are ready for a film meet acrobatic circus moments. Most recently she only put women on stage.

Brutal scenes. In the meantime, with her work, which turns against traditional images of the body and women, she has reached the lofty heights of a Berlin Theatertreffen and the Wiener Festwochen (for the opening of which she contributed a pageant with powerful women and battered cars) and plays at traditional houses such as the Munich City Theater. How do you cope with the naked performers, liters of blood and brutal scenes there? “I call this audience the Silver Lake – because of the hair color. Theatergoers in this age group are very respectful. ”And they read the program. “They know what they’re getting into. But since we’ve been working with blood, people have passed out. They don’t run out, they are carried out. “

Holzinger never thought he would ever create pieces. She actually wanted to dance. But she didn’t want to take any dance academy. Until she ended up in the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam – in the choreography department. “I hadn’t considered before that it was possible to choreograph without dance technique and without a lot of stage experience. But that has influenced the way I do shows – relatively detached from any patterns. “
During her studies she developed a “certain fascination” for the classical dance of the early 1920s, for “the weird birds like Vaslav Nijinsky, where we were reflected”.

The ballet world with its regulation of the body and its traditional narratives attracted Holzinger’s spirit of resistance. Especially the roles of women. Again and again she takes up themes from classical ballet in her productions, in “Apollon” (2017) or her successful piece “Tanz” (2019). “It so happened that a lot of things that I thought were actually normal were received anew. For example, that you see women on stage who seem to be very self-directed and have control over their own bodies, but who can also deal with it in a reflective and humorous way. “

It is particularly important to show something like this in traditional houses, through which the wind of patriarchal hierarchies still blows. “But I also don’t want to be the moral apostle for feminism.” Holzinger brings content to the stage that she personally stands behind, and she brings her experiences as a woman with her. It targets the fitness regime, the diets, the ideal of beauty. “Compared to what the zero-eight-fifteen woman endures and considers completely normal, I find what we do with our bodies on stage is totally harmless. Nothing against spraying on, but that is an extreme way of dealing with the body and more exuberant than hammering a nail in the head. ”Whereby: When Holzinger pounds a nail into his nose, it hurts to watch.

Which brings us back to the blood, which the choreographer also values ​​as a source of inspiration. “I always hope that such a splatter horror film has more to do with my show than an abstract minimalist painting – or no: I would also like my show to have something to do with such a painting.” But why is Is blood so important to them? “Blood came into play with ballet. As a contrast to this formal dance, which is very much about the external, about maintaining the illusion that everything is easy. You can’t see that the ballerina is sweating and that her feet are bloody in her pointe shoes. ”Holzinger shows what shouldn’t be visible. She is also more interested in exercising, disciplining the body, than in what comes out of it. And how does she train? “I only dance in my shows or in clubs. Otherwise I do functional training and workouts, including weightlifting. “

“We dancers are busy escaping the mere materiality of the body.”

Totentanz. When we meet Holzinger for an interview, she is currently working on a new piece and is training for hurdles and pole vaults. For “A Divine Comedy” she was inspired by Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. The play is to be premiered at the Ruhrtriennale in 2021. “To be invited to one of the most popular festivals as a young, experimental choreographer – that’s hell!” She laughs. And then with a subject as theatrical as the negotiation of life and death.

“As an advocate of dance as opposed to theater, transcendence plays an important role for me. As dancers, we are busy escaping the mere materiality of the body. Even if it’s just mental. ”For the piece, she dealt a lot with the dance of death. It’s about old age, decay, dying, transcendence and the idea of ​​hell and paradise. “These are ancient, megacatholic concepts that are part of any pop culture that the ‘Divine Comedy’ refers to.” And there are concepts that are reminiscent of finitude. “Now that I’m 35, it’s the time to think about it: should you freeze your eggs or does it matter? Would it be okay if you died now, or would you have had too short a life then? “