Florentina Holzinger AT/DE
Ophelia's got talent.
Ophelia again? Why fish out Shakespeare’s unfortunate drowning girl again? What more can be said about this icon of femininity? Everything and more, according to iconoclastic choreographer Florentina Holzinger, who loves nothing more than to transform the virtues of yesteryear into contemporary skills. Ophelia’s Got Talent is a huge undertaking. On a stage transformed into a water circus, the Viennese director invites a rigorously feminine, intergenerational, and dynamic cast to lay bare the bride and her trail of feminine stereotypes. Her comic, tragic, trivial, and terribly intelligent TV pastiche is a daring and masterful leap into the many dimensions of female identity. Enjoy a plunge into an adrenalin bath. Cathartic! Please note: the show Ophelia’s Got Talent contains strobe lights, self-injurious acts and explicit depiction or description of physical or sexual violence.
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Comédie de Genève
Locations & access
Full price : CHF 40.- / AVS, AI, UNEMPLOYEMENT : CHF 25.- / student, under 26 year : CHF 12.- / 20ans20francs : CHF 10.- / Festival-goer rate : CHF 8.-
For sold-out shows: a small waiting list (with no guarantee) is organised on site, when the box office opens.
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It is no longer possible to buy tickets. A small waiting list will be available, on site, when the box office opens. This list does not guarantee a ticket.
This show has several zones ! Please choose one so that you can take your seats.
A co-production with the Comédie de Genève
Length 155'
German and English with French surtitles
+18 years old
Florentina Holzinger Website Instagram
With Melody Alia, Saioa Alvarez Ruiz, Inga Busch, Renée Copraij, Sophie Duncan, Fibi Eyewalker, Paige A. Flash, Florentina Holzinger, Annina Machaz, Xana Novais, Netti Nüganen, Urška Preis, Zora Schemm (RambaZamba Theater) And Adele Brinkmeier, Stella Adriana Bergmann, Greta Grip, Golda Kaden, Fiene Lydia Kaever, Izzy Kleiner, Elin Nordin, Lea Schünemann, Rosa Shaw, Nike Strunk, Lenya Tewes, Thea Wagenknecht, Laila Yoalli Waschke, Zoë Willens Concept & Directing Florentina Holzinger Sound design Stefan Schneider Music Paige A. Flash, Urška Preis, Stefan Schneider Stage Design Nikola Knežević Stage Assistant Camilla Smolders Lighting Design Anne Meeussen Video Design Melody Alia, Jens Crull, Max Heesen Live-Camera Melody Alia Dramaturgy Renée Copraij, Sara Ostertag, Fernando Belfiore, Michele Rizzo Dramaturgie Volksbühne Johanna Kobusch Technical Direction Stephan Werner Technical Assistant Jan Havers, Dörte Wilfroth Production management Katharina Wallisch, Stephan Werner Tour Management Moira Garee Management & International Distribution Katharina Wallisch & Giulia Messia - neon lobster
Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and Spirit
Co-production
Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Tanzquartier Wien, Arsenic Lausanne, asphalt Festival, Gessnerallee Zürich, Kampnagel Internationales Sommerfestival and DE SINGEL Antwerpen
With support by
Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien and Bundeskanzleramt für Kunst und Kultur
RambaZamba Theatre Berlin
Full price : CHF 40.- / AVS, AI, UNEMPLOYEMENT : CHF 25.- / student, under 26 year : CHF 12.- / 20ans20francs : CHF 10.- / Festival-goer rate : CHF 8.- / See rates details
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Le corps et ses représentations dans les arts vivants
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Ophelia's Got Talent
- Performance
- TR Producties
- Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam
- Feeling Curious?
- Language No Problem
- Internationaal
- Weekendvoorstellingen
- Alleen Theater Rotterdam locaties
- 17 apr 19:30 Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlijn Berlijn Geweest
- 18 apr 19:30 Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlijn Berlijn Geweest
- 19 apr 19:30 Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlijn Berlijn Geweest
- 21 apr 19:30 Tanzquartier Wien , Wenen Geweest
- 22 apr 19:30 Tanzquartier Wien , Wenen Geweest
- 23 apr 19:30 Tanzquartier Wien , Wenen Geweest
- 25 apr 19:30 Tanzquartier Wien , Wenen Geweest
- 27 sep 20:00 - 22:35 Nederlandse première TR25 Schouwburg, Rotterdam Grote zaal Geweest
- 28 sep 20:00 - 22:35 TR25 Schouwburg, Rotterdam Grote zaal Geweest
Discover the sensational theater of Florentina Holzinger, the "superstar of contemporary European dance," who transcends the boundaries between performance art, choreography, ritual, and stunt show in a spectacular way. This performance, which has already acquired cult status in Berlin, can now be admired during the Feeling Curious? festival.
Klik hier voor Nederlands
The central theme in Holzinger's maximalist show is Shakespeare's Ophelia, whose walking through the water is reinterpreted as an empowerment strategy. The performance begins as a talent show where superheroines - even braver, more combative, and more seaworthy than before - flirt with danger.
Water symbolizes adaptation, growth, and an eternal connection with the outside world. In this landscape of illusions and references to water creatures and drowned strangers, you are challenged to reflect on the role of training and practice in escaping the precarious circumstances of our time.
This extraordinary performance has not gone unnoticed. Ophelia's Got Talent has been selected for the prestigious Theatertreffen Festival '23, where the best German productions come together. The jury describes it as follows: "...the actors tell and rewrite their traumatic experiences by playing with the danger that accompanies their lives in a self-determined and controlled manner. From survival mode to a mad spectacle." This is the crackling spectacle everyone is talking about, thanks to Florentina Holzinger and her unparalleled creative vision.
Holzinger's all-feminine cast showcases the naked body in all its facets, blended with references to dance history, pop culture, and confrontational torture acts. But there's more! In this large-scale production, she adds motorized "man's toys," enhancing the intensity and visual impact of the personal layers.
The presence of cameras capturing small actions and projecting them on screens on either side of the stage adds an extra dimension to the experience. No detail goes unnoticed.
Step into the world of Ophelia's Got Talent and witness an enchanting spectacle. From breathtaking pole dancing to piercings, each act leaves you astonished. The pace quickens, and all associations with water are showcased. From fishermen to water nymphs, from Narcissus to Schubert, the performance traverses cultural references and forms a visual waterfall of images. At times, you may lose track, but that's precisely the intention. Let yourself be carried away by the abundance of images and lose yourself in the layers of Holzinger's work.
Feeling Curious? Ophelia's Got Talent is a part of International Performance Festival Feeling Curious? Click here to find out more about the festival Feeling Extra? Complete your festival experience! Click here to check out the side programming Tickets: Why only go to one performance when you can have them all? Getting a Passe-partout is the cheapest way to discover the festival Click here to buy tickets Language: This performance will be spoken in English without surtitles Accessibility: We recommend that visitors of Ophelia's Got Talent are 18+ Triggerwarning: The show Ophelia’s Got Talent contains:
- Self-injurious acts
- Strobe lights
- Explicit depiction or description of physical or sexual violence
- Internationaal 23/24 TR Gids
Ontdek het sensationele theater van Florentina Holzinger, de 'superster van de hedendaagse Europese dans', die de grenzen tussen performance art, choreografie, ritueel en stuntshow op spectaculaire wijze overstijgt. Deze voorstelling, die al een cultstatus heeft verworven in Berlijn, is nu te bewonderen tijdens het festival Feeling Curious?
De rode draad in Holzinger’s maximalistische show is Shakespeare’s Ophelia, waarvan het lopen door het water geherinterpreteerd wordt als een empowerment-strategie. De voorstelling begint als een talentenjacht waar superheldinnen - nog moediger, strijdbaarder en zeewaardiger dan voorheen - flirten met het gevaar.
Water symboliseert aanpassing, groei en een eeuwige verbondenheid met de buitenwereld. In dit landschap van illusies en verwijzingen naar waterwezens en verdronken vreemdelingen, word je uitgedaagd om na te denken over de rol van training en oefening in het ontsnappen aan de precaire omstandigheden van onze tijd.
Deze buitengewone voorstelling is niet onopgemerkt gebleven. Ophelia's Got Talent is geselecteerd voor het prestigieuze Theatertreffen Festival '23, waar de beste Duitse producties samenkomen. De jury beschrijft het als volgt: "...de acteurs vertellen en herschrijven hun traumatische ervaringen door op een zelfbepaalde en beheerste manier te spelen met het gevaar dat hun leven met zich meebrengt. Van overlevingsmodus naar een waanzinnig spektakel." Dit is het knetterende spektakel waar iedereen het over heeft, dankzij Florentina Holzinger en haar ongeëvenaarde creatieve visie.
Holzinger's all feminine cast brengt het naakte lichaam in al zijn facetten naar voren, vermengd met referenties naar dansgeschiedenis, popcultuur en confronterende 'torture acts'. Maar er is meer! In deze grootschalige productie voegt ze gemotoriseerde 'man's toys' toe, waardoor de intensiteit en visuele impact van de persoonlijke gelaagdheid worden versterkt.
De aanwezigheid van camera's, die kleine handelingen vastleggen en projecteren op schermen aan weerszijden van het toneel, voegen een extra dimensie toe aan de ervaring. Geen detail gaat onopgemerkt Stap binnen in de wereld van Ophelia's Got Talent en wees getuige van een betoverend spektakel. Van adembenemende paaldans tot piercings, elke act laat je verbijsterd achter. Het tempo wordt opgevoerd, en alle associaties met water passeren de revue. Van vissers tot waternimfen, van Narcissus tot Schubert, de voorstelling doorkruist culturele referenties en vormt een visuele waterval van beelden. Soms raak je de draad even kwijt, maar dat is juist de bedoeling. Laat je meeslepen door de overvloed aan beelden en verlies jezelf in de gelaagdheid van Holzinger's werk.
Triggerwarning
Please note: The show Ophelia’s Got Talent contains:
- self-injurious acts
- strobe lights
- explicit depiction or description of physical or sexual violence
Ophelia's Got Talent is made possible in part by ACT: a European collaborative project on ecology, climate change and social transition. In an era of climate breakdown, mass extinction and rising inequality, we join forces in a project about hope, where connections between broad perspectives and local initiatives are central.
![ophelia's got talent tour](https://www.theaterrotterdam.nl/cms_files/Image/act%20and%20eu%20logo%20(1).jpg)
The Austrian choreographer’s shows blend dance, stunts and sideshow-inspired acts to explore lofty ideas about gender and art. She pushes performers to extremes — and audiences, too. New York Times
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Language no problem 23/24 tr gids.
Concept & Directing Florentina Holzinger With Melody Alia, Saioa Alvarez Ruiz, Inga Busch, Renée Copraij, Sophie Duncan, Princess Tweedle Needle, Paige A. Flash, Florentina Holzinger, Annina Machaz, Xana Novais, Netti Nüganen, Urška Preis, Zora Schemm And Stella Adriana Bergmann, Greta Grip, Golda Kaden, Fiene Lydia Kaever, Izzy Kleiner, Elin Nordin, Lea Schünemann, Nike Strunk, Laila Yoalli Waschke, Zoë Willens Sounddesign Stefan Schneider Music Paige A. Flash, Urška Preis, Stefan Schneider Stage Design Nikola Knežević Lighting Design Anne Meeussen Video Design Melody Alia, Jens Crull, Max Heesen Live-Kamera Melody Alia Live-Schnitt Max Heesen Dramaturgy Renée Copraij, Sara Ostertag, Fernando Belfiore, Michele Rizzo Dramaturgie Volksbühne Johanna Kobusch Production management Dana Tucker Management & International Distribution Katharina Wallisch
A production by Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and Spirit
Co-produced by Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Tanzquartier Wien, Arsenic Lausanne, asphalt Festival, Gessnerallee Zürich, Kampnagel Internationales Sommerfestival and DE SINGEL Antwerpen.
With funding by Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien and Bundeskanzleramt für Kunst und Kultur.
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2.5.–20.5.2024
Theatertreffen
10 Productions
Ophelia’s Got Talent
Production | 10 remarkable productions
By Florentina Holzinger
A production of Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin and Spirit in co-production with Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Tanzquartier Wien, Arsenic Lausanne, asphalt Festival, Gessnerallee Zürich, Kampnagel Internationales Sommerfestival and DE SINGEL
World premiere 15 September 2022 (Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz)
![ophelia's got talent tour ophelia's got talent tour](https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/magnoliaPublic/.imaging/mte/bfs-de-fe/mini/dam/bfs-de/Theatertreffen/2023/tt23_videobilder/-tt23_videobild_ophelias_got_talent-/jcr:content/Picture_tt23_videobild_ophelias_got_talent_ORIGINAL.jpg)
Trailer © Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
In Florentina Holzinger’s gigantic water spectacle, the company enters into a talent show to conduct a physical study on the psychology of water in the 21st century.
Trigger Information Please note: The show “Ophelia’s Got Talent” contains • self-injurious acts • blood • needles • strobe lights • explicit depiction or description of physical or sexual violence
Audience Discussion Sunday, 14 May after the performance Moderation: Vivian Perkovic, attending jury member: Katrin Ullmann
Water is the element of assimilation and adaptation, a symbol of the boundless capacity to expand, of an eternal, inseparable unity with the outside world. Iconographically, water has been closely associated with womanhood – and with images of violence and death: a figure standing next to a quiet pond is a cipher for the domestication of female subjectivity; whitecaps on the sea’s surface stand for the result of her physical disintegration, a mermaid’s fishtail is a metaphor for her ability to embody the regularities surrounding her. In an oceanic landscape full of cultural and historical references to all manner of water creatures and drowned strangers, “Ophelia’s Got Talent” does not only ask whether training and physical exercise can help us escape the precarious circumstances of the present with climate catastrophes and other disasters looming. On the wet terrain of the stage, the performers try out what it means to “be Ophelia”. Deliberately satisfying the fantasies of others is a part of the elaborate game which she is mistress of. Leda, Melusine, Undine, the nymphs, Nereids or sirens, they all shape our biographies to this day. And as their heiresses, the company speculates on future life forms that will have assimilated these conditions, transformed them and yielded new forms of being.
Statement of the Jury Florentina Holzinger’s super-heroines are back – even more courageous, combative and fit for the deepest seas than before. Moderated by the glass-eyed pirate “Captain Hook” who, like the rest of the female crew, performs bottomless, the evening begins as a talent show of athletes with various gifts who leave behind customary body images and taste norms. They wear their scars with pride and invent new forms of gracefulness. The stunts steadily increase in momentum: from freediving in several water basins to mass masturbation on a hovering helicopter, from siren song to plastic waste maelstrom inside the water basin. The common thread through Holzinger’s maximalist sea-creature show is Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Her act of drowning herself, however, is reinterpreted as an empowerment strategy: The performers narrate and rewrite their trauma by a self-determined, controlled flirtation with mortal danger. From survival mode to crazed spectacle.
To juror Katrin Ullmann’s video statement in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library (in German)
Programmheft (pdf 0.1 MB)
Artistic Team
Florentina Holzinger – Concept and Staging Stefan Schneider – Sound Design Paige A. Flash, Urška Preis, Stefan Schneider – Music Nikola Knežević – Stage Design Anne Meeussen – Lighting Design Melody Alia, Jens Crull, Max Heesen – Video Design Melody Alia – Live Camera Max Heesen – Live Editing Renée Copraij, Sara Ostertag, Fernando Belfiore, Michele Rizzo – Dramaturgy Johanna Kobusch – Dramaturgy Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
Melody Alia, Saioa Alvarez Ruiz, Inga Busch, Renée Copraij, Sophie Duncan, Fibi Eyewalker/Princess Tweedle Needle, Paige A. Flash, Florentina Holzinger, Annina Machaz, Xana Novais, Netti Nüganen, Urška Preis, Zora Schemm
and Stella Adriana Bergmann, Greta Grip, Golda Kaden, Fiene Lydia Kaever, Izzy Kleiner, Elin Nordin, Lea Schünemann, Nike Strunk, Laila Yoalli Waschke, Zoë Willens
![ophelia's got talent tour Two women with fish tails swim in a water tank. A naked woman lies on the floor in front of the tank.](https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/magnoliaPublic/.imaging/mte/bfs-de-fe/mini/dam/bfs-de/Theatertreffen/2023/tt23_bilder/tt23_inszenierungen/tt23_ophelias_got_talent/tt23_ophelias_got_talent_2/jcr:content/Picture_tt23_ophelias_got_talent_2_ORIGINAL.jpg)
© Nicole Marianna Wytyczak
![ophelia's got talent tour A naked woman performs an unleashing act underwater in a water tank while three naked women and one woman dressed in a sailor top look on.](https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/magnoliaPublic/.imaging/mte/bfs-de-fe/mini/dam/bfs-de/Theatertreffen/2023/tt23_bilder/tt23_inszenierungen/tt23_ophelias_got_talent/tt23_ophelias_got_talent_3/jcr:content/Picture_tt23_ophelias_got_talent_3_ORIGINAL.jpg)
With funding from Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien and Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlichen Dienst und Sport.
With many thanks to RambaZamba Theater.
![ophelia's got talent tour The Berliner - Berlin in English since 2002](https://www.the-berliner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/TheBerliner_Logo_1000px_RGB.png)
Ophelia’s Got Talent ★★★★★
Florentina Holzinger's role as in-house choreographer at the Volksbühne seems to have come with a blank cheque. Ophelia's Got Talent is an extraordinary piece of performance art.
![ophelia's got talent tour](https://www.the-berliner.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/ogt_nicole_marianna_wytyczak-1184221.jpeg)
This feminist dance spectacle is one of the most technically sophisticated and complicated pieces of theatre currently on in Berlin. The stage is dominated by several swimming pools and water tanks, which the naked all-female cast use to scuba dive, swim through and – in a convincing moment of apparent play-gone-wrong – almost drown while tied up. There is blood, there are gory and intimate moments with the human body and at one point a real helicopter descends from the ceiling.
![ophelia's got talent tour exberliner logo](https://www.the-berliner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/phone-newsletter-the-berliner.png)
Cameras on stage, feeding live to large screens, give the audience a particularly close-up view of the action. Beginning with a “talent show” segment that descends into a broad treatise on misogynist violence, rape and female objectification, the performers also do tap dances, sea shanties and some Shakespeare. Occasional moments of calm among the carnage bring relief. This extraordinary piece of performance art will solidify Holzinger’s reputation as one of the most original and challenging choreographers in town.
- Showing at Volksbühne, Mitte, details , until 27.1.23 (in English and German with surtitles).
![ophelia's got talent tour](https://www.the-berliner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Exb-outnow-233_popup.png)
Video | Trailer | Theatertreffen 2023
Ophelia’s Got Talent
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By Florentina Holzinger
A production of Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin and Spirit in co-production with Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Tanzquartier Wien, Arsenic Lausanne, asphalt Festival, Gessnerallee Zürich, Kampnagel Internationales Sommerfestival and DE SINGEL
In Florentina Holzinger’s gigantic water spectacle, the company enters into a talent show to conduct a physical study on the psychology of water in the 21st century.
World premiere 15 September 2022 (Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz)
Available from 22 March 2023
10 Productions
Florentina Holzinger
Ophelia's got talent.
Summer Festival all-time favourite comes to the Elbe with its water spectacle invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen.
44 / 36 / 24 / 14 Euro (conc. from 9 Euro, 50% conc. with Festivalkarte)
Possible triggers: live tattoo & piercing, strobe light, loud music
At last years Summer Festival Florentina Holzinger stunned the audience with the hell ride A DIVINE COMEDY . Now she returns with OPHELIA’S GOT TALENT, which premiered at Volksbühne, sold out permanently for months in advance, was invited to Theatertreffen and is dedicated to the wet element. With Houdini tricks, ballet-historical refer-ences from John Neumeier’s “Little Mermaid” to Frederick Ashton’s “Ondine” and graceful stunts, Holzinger and her 21-member crew tell of water creatures and their cultural history. This maximalist water spectacle takes apart art genres just as much as male fantasies. Based on Shakespeare’s Ophelia, the performers narrate and overwrite their traumas through the selfdetermined, controlled flirtation with mortal danger. Whereby Ophelia’s walk into the water, according to the jury of the Berliner Theatertreffen, “is reinterpreted as an empowerment strategy: from survival mode to a mad spectacle.”
Evening program to download
Concept, Direction Florentina Holzinger With Melody Alia, Saioa Alvarez Ruiz, Inga Busch, Renée Copraij, Sophie Duncan, Fibi Eyewalker, Paige A. Flash, Florentina Holzinger, Annina Machaz, Xana Novais, Netti Nüganen, Urška Preis, Zora Schemm a nd Stella Adriana Bergmann, Golda Kaden, Lea Schünemann, Nike Strunk, Laila Yoalli Waschke, Fiene Kaever Sounddesign Stefan Schneider Music Paige A. Flash, Urška Preis, Stefan Schneider Stage Nikola Knežević Lightdesign Anne Meeussen Videodesign Melody Alia, Jens Crull, Max Heesen Live-Camera Melody Alia Dramaturgy Renée Copraij, Sara Ostertag, Fernando Belfiore, Michele Rizzo Dramaturgy Volksbühne Johanna Kobusch Production Katharina Wallisch, Stephan Werner Tourmanagement Dana Tucker Management, International Distribution Katharina Wallisch & Giulia Messia – neon lobster
Produced by der Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz und Spirit Coproduction Internationales Sommerfestival Kampnagel, Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Tanzquartier Wien, Arsenic Lausanne, asphalt Festival, Gessnerallee Zürich, DE SINGEL Antwerpen. Funded by der Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien sowie dem Bundeskanzleramt für Kunst und Kultur.
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Ophelia’s Got Talent
studied choreography at the Amsterdam School for New Dance Development (SNDO). After many well-received cooperations with Vincent Riebeek ( Kein Applaus für Scheiße and Schönheitsabend , among others) and several solo projects, she worked on a trilogy about body discipline, with which she is still on tour: Recovery , Apollon and, most recently, TANZ . Dangerous stunts, spectacular circus acts, splatter scenes or extreme martial arts – Florentina Holzinger’s work can be situated at the intersection of high culture and so-called entertainment culture. At the same time, it can also be read as a continuous feminist manifesto. TANZ , which premiered at TQW in 2019, was the only Austrian production to be invited to Berliner Theatertreffen in 2020 and was also awarded the Austrian theatre prize Nestroy for Best Director. Holzinger’s Étude for an Emergency. Composition for Ten Bodies and a Car was shown at Münchner Kammerspiele in 2020. Her most recent piece at TQW was A Divine Comedy which premiered at Ruhrtriennale. Florentina Holzinger is part of René Pollesch’s artistic team at Volksbühne Berlin.
With Melody Alia, Saioa Alvarez Ruiz, Inga Busch, Renée Copraij, Sophie Duncan, Paige A. Flash, Florentina Holzinger, Annina Machaz, Xana Novais, Netti Nüganen, Urška Preis, Zora Schemm Princess Tweedle Needle And Stella Adriana Bergmann, Greta Lou Grip, Isadora Kleiner, Lea Schünemann, Nike Strunk, Laila Yoalli Waschke Concept, direction Florentina Holzinger Sound design Stefan Schneider Music Paige A. Flash, Urška Preis, Stefan Schneider Stage design Nikola Knežević Lighting design Anne Meeussen Video design Melody Alia, Jens Crull, Max Heesen Live camera Melody Alia Dramaturgy Renée Copraij, Sara Ostertag, Fernando Belfiore, Michele Rizzo Dramaturgy Volksbühne Johanna Kobusch Production management Dana Tucker, Katharina Wallisch, Stephan Werner Tour management Dana Tucker Management, international distribution Katharina Wallisch – A production by Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and Spirit, co-produced by Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Tanzquartier Wien, Arsenic Lausanne, asphalt Festival, Gessnerallee Zürich, Kampnagel Internationales Sommerfestival and DE SINGEL Antwerpen. With kind support from the Municipal Department of Cultural Affairs, Vienna, and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport. Thanks to RambaZamba Theatre Berlin.
‘Pour water on thyself: thus shalt thou be a fountain to the universe.’ – Kenneth Anger
In the twilight of the ‘Age of Aquarius’, there’s a shift away from technological innovation towards humanitarian concerns and collective responsibilities. The narratives of Ophelia’s heiresses have inevitably resurfaced to float like a carpet of algae above the depths and abysses they at once cover.
The wet terrain the stage has turned into provides the training ground for working out how to become like Ophelia – embodying the laws operative in this special environment and satisfying the fantasies and desires of others are elements in an ambivalent game Ophelia masters brilliantly. The narratives of her ancestors, Leda, Melusine, Undine, nymphs, nereids and sirens, have left a distinctive mark on contemporary biographies. Excellent dancers as they are, they love music and lure us into the water dragging us to the lower depths to make us look into the mirror of Venus. Yet the actual place of their significance remains untold; it has drowned and sunk to the ground. Only in the process of decomposition do the bodies float to the water’s surface, adrift, unless they’re recovered or mouldering away to become one with nature finally.
Water is the element of assimilation and adaptation, a symbol of the boundless capacity to expand, of eternal, inseparable unity with the outside world. Ichnographically, water has been associated with womanhood – and with death: a figure standing next to a quiet pond is a cypher for the domestication of female subjectivity; whitecaps on the sea’s surface stand for the result of her disintegration and disengagement, a mermaid’s fishtail is a metaphor for denied female sexuality. An oceanic landscape arises, full of allusions, cultural and historical references to all water creatures and drowned strangers. This scenario not only asks whether training and physical exercise can help us escape the precarious circumstances of the present, with climate catastrophes and other disasters looming. It also invites speculations on future life forms that will have assimilated these conditions, transformed them, and created new forms of being.
Fluctuation, reflection, reproduction, healing, and violence are the central themes of the new show by Florentina Holzinger and her multi-disciplinary, multi-generational company, which is a physical study in the psychology of water in the 21st century.
A Tanzquartier Wien event
In cooperation with
Remaining tickets will be available at the evening box office. Waiting numbers will be given out from 60 minutes before showtime.
In German and English with surtitles
We recommend a minimum age of 18 to attend the performance.
Please note: The show contains self-injurious acts, blood, needles, strobe lights, and explicit depiction or descriptions of physical or sexual violence.
During the performance of Ophelia’s Got Talent , child well-being is ensured. Psychologists and parents supervise the children involved. They can only see the part of the show where they are on stage.
Ophelia’s Got Talent Afterparty
Noushin redjaian, bossschnuffi, dj terror, polyxene.
![Florentina Holzinger, Ophelia's got talent — © Florentina Holzinger Florentina Holzinger, Ophelia's got talent — © Florentina Holzinger](https://zapdrupalfilesprod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/styles/large/public/2024-04/MAIN%20Ophelia%27s%20got%20talent.jpg.webp?VersionId=bxwyazA1ljdNm.SxCem9hUZzao4c9eit&itok=9v8kHEex)
Florentina Holzinger, Ophelia's got talent — © Florentina Holzinger
Ophelia’s got talent, 2024
Performance — more dates (past).
For her latest big show, the performance artist Florentina Holzinger from Vienna found inspiration among female literary characters associated with water. Nymphs, sirens and Nereids. Leda, Melusine, Ondine and, of course: Ophelia. Together with the seductive female figures she tempts the audience into the deep to confront us with what we do not wish to see: a threatening climate disaster, wars, objectivity, misogyny ...
- 21.06.2024 - 20:00 / 22:35
- 22.06.2024 - 20:00 / 22:35
- 23.06.2024 - 15:00 / 17:35
More about this work
Starting with female physicality, Florentina Holzinger shifts between popular genres such as talent spotting or the ‘revue’ and canonised Art with a capital A.
For her latest big show Ophelia’s got talent the revolutionary of performing arts from Vienna found her inspiration among female literary characters associated with water: Leda, Melusine, Ondine, nymphs, Nereids, sirens and, of course, Ophelia. They (and Holzinger) tempt us into the deep to confront the audience with what they do not wish to see: a threatening climate disaster, wars, misogyny, objectivity …
In her ocean scenery, Holzinger reflects upon violence, reproduction and healing. A spectacular, physical study of the psychology of water in the 21st century by an intergenerational all-female cast of energetic daredevils.
“This extraordinary piece of performance art will solidify Holzinger’s reputation as one of the most original and challenging choreographers in town.” — Exberliner
Discover the artist
![Florentina Holzinger — Photo © Apollonia Theresa Bitzan Florentina Holzinger — Photo © Apollonia Theresa Bitzan](https://zapdrupalfilesprod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/styles/thumbnail/public/2024-04/Florentina%20Holzinger%20%C2%A9%20Apollonia%20Theresa%20Bitzan.jpg.webp?VersionId=4VbnCs.SAC7Mj2nIcX3payORTu6y9gfm&itok=sK1XXVUM)
Florentina Holzinger — Photo © Apollonia Theresa Bitzan
Florentina Holzinger
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Florentina Holzinger Makes Everyone Uncomfortable
The Austrian choreographer’s shows blend dance, stunts and sideshow-inspired acts to explore lofty ideas about gender and art. She pushes performers to extremes — and audiences, too.
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By Thomas Rogers
BERLIN — In a rehearsal hall on the city’s outskirts, Xana Novais was hanging by her teeth. On a recent evening, the tattooed 27-year-old performer was suspended a few inches above the ground, biting down on a piece of leather hanging from a rope, perfecting a new skill called the “iron jaw.” It did not look easy.
Novais was practicing for a sequence in “Ophelia’s Got Talent,” a new work by the Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger that premieres at the Berlin Volksbühne theater on Thursday. As part of the performance, which blends dance, stunts and sideshow-inspired acts, Novais was meant to dangle like a fish caught on a hook for about half a minute. But after 20 seconds, she let go, lowered herself down, and grimaced. “This is about learning to manage discomfort,” she said.
Discomfort is central to the work of Holzinger, 36, who has recently become a star of the European dance and performance worlds by pushing the limits of what performers — and audiences — can endure. Holzinger, whose interest in bodily extremes dates back to her own training as a dancer, has drawn acclaim for works that feature large casts of nude female performers and explore lofty ideas about art and gender while showcasing acts, sometimes involving bodily fluids, that obliterate the boundaries of good taste.
In “Apollon,” a 2017 piece exploring the work of the choreographer George Balanchine and notions of artist and muse, performers bled and defecated onstage. “A Divine Comedy,” a 2021 riff on Dante’s epic poem about the circles of hell, included a scene in which a woman ejaculates explosively while using a vibrator. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of her performances are punctuated by audience members walking out.
“Ophelia’s Got Talent” — an exploration of myths and narratives about women and water, including mermaids, sirens and the tragic, drowning figure from “Hamlet” — is the first of several original works Holzinger is creating as part of a multiyear agreement with the Volksbühne, one of the most influential theaters in the German-speaking world.
René Pollesch, the theater’s artistic director , said he was partly attracted to Holzinger’s work because of her interest in showcasing a variety of strong female performers, including older women and women with disabilities, doing daring and demanding acts onstage. “This is a radical feminism, not a reform feminism,” he said.
Holzinger, who has a self-deprecating wit and the physical intensity of a boxer, explained in an interview that she and her cast would pull fish hooks through their skin and hold their breath underwater for up to five minutes during the show. At one point, she said, cast members would form the shape of a fountain and squirt water from their noses. “That will be a nice image,” she said.
She added that she drew inspiration from dance history, mythology and action films, including the James Bond franchise, but that she viewed the stage as a “laboratory” where ostensibly taboo acts can be performed freely. “I can maybe teach people something about what forms of shame are necessary and which are not,” she said.
Life under capitalism encouraged individuals to perfect themselves, Holzinger said, adding that her work delved into the ways this shaped women’s bodies. “We are in a society where you are able to purchase and create your own femininity, and optimize yourself in ways the system wants you to,” she said. In her work, she added, she tried to find “unexpected” ways of using the body, which has been conditioned to look and move a certain way by social pressures.
Barbara Frey, the artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale, a prominent arts festival in Germany that commissioned “A Divine Comedy,” said Holzinger had created a “new form” of performance that combines “dance, exuberant wit, great tenderness” and “the Roman gladiatorial arena” while exploring “the male gaze — and the female gaze — on the female body.”
Some have compared her work to the Viennese Actionists, an Austrian art movement in the 1960s and ’70s whose (largely male) adherents staged performances in which they carried out extreme acts, including self-mutilation, as a way of confronting spectators with what they saw as repressed elements of Austrian society. Although Holzinger has previously said she draws little inspiration from the movement, the association with the Actionists, who are now a revered part of Austria’s art history, helped her gain early respect in her native country, she explained.
Born to a pharmacist and a lawyer in Vienna, Holzinger came late to dance. She said that soon after she began her training, at age 17, she realized it was too late for her to perfect the skills necessary for a classic career as a dancer, and that she was “too strong, too muscular for ballet.”
After being rejected from several traditional European dance academies, she enrolled in the School for New Dance Development , an experimental school in Amsterdam, where she began exploring alternative ways of using her body as a vehicle for spectacle. “If I’m training my body to pee on cue, then I’m exerting control over my body,” she said. “It could be seen as a form of dance technique, even if it’s not a grand jeté or a tendu.”
After several eyebrow-raising collaborations with Vincent Riebeek, a Dutch choreographer, Holzinger said she reached a turning point in her career after a near-death experience during a 2013 performance at an arts festival in Norway, in which she fell from a height of 16 feet while doing an aerial stunt. Although she survived with a concussion and a broken nose, the accident, caused by a screw holding her weight that came loose, led her to take a more meticulous approach to her work and safety.
Since then, she has focused on creating her more elaborate works for all-female ensembles. Four years after the accident, she debuted “Apollon,” a piece that wrestled with what Holzinger described as the “lived experience of ballet” and the “overdone femininity of ballerinas.” The show was widely acclaimed and toured internationally . That piece, as well as her 2019 follow-up, “Tanz,” drew parallels between the suffering experienced by dancers — including via the ballet shoe, which she described as a “torture item” that often deforms and bloodies dancers’ feet — and the staged violence of less highbrow acts, such as sword swallowing, or body suspension shows .
Finding performers for her works, she admitted, hasn’t always been easy. Some, like Novais, have a background in theater, while others are sex workers or sideshow performers. As part of her recruitment efforts, she said, she once advertised for “women with special talents” on Craigslist.
But her work has also attracted performers with more traditional dance backgrounds, including Trixie Cordua, 81, a former soloist with the Hamburg Ballet who has worked with John Cage. Cordua, who has Parkinson’s disease and sometimes moves onstage with the help of a motorized wheelchair, said in a phone interview that she was drawn to working with Holzinger because of her “ability to combine things that don’t usually fit together to form a fully new constellation,” and because of her willingness to go “very, very far.”
Holzinger said she was comfortable with the fact that the extreme elements of her works often led people to walk out of her performances. “If people come to me expecting an evening of abstract postmodern dance, I fully respect their decision to leave,” she said. “I’d rather be left with 10 people in the audience who find it cool.”
Ophelia’s Got Talent Sept. 15 through Oct. 25 at the Berlin Volksbühne; volksbuehne.berlin .
Stepping Into the World of Dance
An exhibition at the Morgan sheds light on The Ballets Russes, the revolutionary dance company founded by Sergei Diaghilev. The objects on display reveal the company’s astounding level of collaboration across artistic mediums .
Jean-Paul Montanari’s 41-year career as the head of Montpellier Danse has been entwined with the rise of contemporary dance as a force in France.
The choreographer Faye Driscoll uses the ocean as her collaborator in a sunset dance celebrating the 10th anniversary of Beach Sessions , a performance series at Rockaway Beach.
Shen Yun Performing Arts grew into an international juggernaut as well as an economic engine for Falun Gong, the persecuted Chinese religious movement, and its leaders. Behind the pageantry were untreated injuries and emotional abuse .
Calvin Royal III, a leading dancer at American Ballet Theater and the company’s only Black male principal, planned and curated a ballet festival at the Joyce Theater called “Unite” with intention and care.
![title= ophelia's got talent tour](https://www.iheartberlin.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/iHeartBerlin-Logo-2020-neon.png)
Ophelia’s Got Talent by Florentina Holzinger
![ophelia's got talent tour ophelias got talent volksbühne 960x640](https://www.iheartberlin.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/ophelias-got-talent-volksbühne-960x640.jpeg)
Pour water on thyself: thus shalt thou be a fountain to the universe. (Kenneth Anger)
In the twilight of the ‘Age of Aquarius’, there’s a shift away from technological innovation towards humanitarian concerns and collective responsibilities, and the narratives of Ophelia’s heiresses have inevitably resurfaced to float like a carpet of algae above the depths and abysses they at once cover.
The wet terrain the stage has turned into provides the training ground for working out how to become like Ophelia – embodying the laws operative in this special environment and satisfying fantasies and desires of others are elements in an ambivalent game which Ophelia masters brilliantly. The narratives of her ancestors, Leda, Melusine, Undine, nymphs, nereids and sirens, have left a distinctive mark on contemporary biographies. Excellent dancers as they are, they love music and like to lure us into the water dragging us to the lower depths to make us look into the mirror of Venus. Yet the true place of their significance remains untold, it has drowned and sunk to the ground. It is only in the process of decomposition that the bodies float to the surface of the water, adrift unless they’re recovered, or mouldering away to finally become one with nature.
Water is the element of assimilation and adaptation, a symbol of the boundless capacity to expand, of an eternal, inseparable unity with the outside world. Iconographically, water has been associated with womanhood – and with death: a figure standing next to a quiet pond is a cipher for the domestication of female subjectivity; whitecaps on the sea’s surface stand for the result of her disintegration and disengagement; a mermaid’s fishtail is a metaphor for denied female sexuality. An oceanic landscape arises, full of allusions, cultural and historical references to all manner of water creatures and drowned strangers, a scenario that not only asks whether training and physical exercise can help us escape the precarious circumstances of the present with climate catastrophes and other disasters looming. It also invites speculations on future life forms that will have assimilated these conditions, transformed them and created new forms of being.
Fluctuation, reflection, reproduction, healing, and violence – these are the central themes of the new show by Florentina Holzinger and her multi-disciplinary, multi-generational company, which is a physical study in the psychology of water in the 21st century.
Note A minimum age of 18 to attend the performance is recommended.
Triggerwarning Please note: The show Ophelia’s Got Talent contains self-injurious acts, blood, needles, strobe lights, explicit depiction or description of physical or sexual violence.
Tickets: 16–42€
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- Premiere: Ophelia's Got Talent
Saioa Alvarez Ruiz, Inga Busch, Renée Copraij, Sophie Duncan, Fibi Eyewalker, Florentina Holzinger, Annina Machaz, Melody Micmacher, Xana Novais, Netti Nüganen, Urška Preis, Zora Schemm, Stella Adriana Bergmann, Nike Strunk, Laila Yoalli Waschke und Zoë Willens.
From September 15 until September 26, 2022, the Volksbühne will host the play Ophelia's Got Talent by Florentine Holzinger.
It is set in the twilight of the "Age of Aquarius," a time of shift from technological innovation to humanitarian concerns and collective responsibility. The stage is wet terrain: in swimming pool, swamp and morass, Ophelia's heiresses prepare for the inevitable.
Nymphs, Nereids, Sirens and Melusines love music, are excellent dancers and look into a future that is fragile and uncertain. They lure people into the water, force them to look into the depths - and into the mirror of Venus. The true place of their meaning is thus in the dark, submerged and sunk to the bottom. Only the process of decay brings their bodies to the surface, and there they float until they are found, or they decay to become one with nature. This oceanic landscape, full of cultural-historical references to aquatic creatures and drowned unknowns, is not just about how to survive precarious circumstances through training, but about the possibility of speculating on a new form of life.
Fluctuation, reflection, reproduction, healing and violence: in Florentina Holzinger's new work at the Volksbühne, the multidisciplinary ensemble from several generations performs a physical study of the psychology of water in the 21st century.
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Café Europa
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Up she rises: Ophelia's Got Talent and the body art of Florentina Holzinger
On a feast of sword-swallowing, body piercing - and tap-dancing at the volksbühne..
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Welcome to Café Europa, a weekly newsletter dedicated to European theatre.
This week I’m in Berlin, where I managed to snag a ticket for one of the most talked-about shows in town, Florentina Holzinger’s Ophelia’s Got Talent at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz . While I was there I reviewed, La Danse D’Amazon, the new show by Rimini Protokoll for The Stage. I also contributed a story about one of my weirder experiences as a critic to the most recent edition of Fergus Morgan’s ever-excellent The Crush Bar (welcome to everyone who found their way here as a result).
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In Robert Altman's 1993 film Short Cuts, a tapestry made up of Raymond Carver short stories, Julianne Moore’s character has an argument with her husband while wearing just a T-shirt. Below the waist she's naked. Now Altman had no qualms about humiliating his female characters on screen (see MASH, Nashville etc for evidence of this), but in exposing Moore in this way she is not made smaller. As vulnerable as she is in this moment, she is also formidable.
In Ophelia’s Got Talent , Florentina Holzinger’s 2022 show for Berlin’s Volksbühne, everyone on stage is naked, either from the waist down or fully nude bar various harnesses and microphone packs. This is par for the course in one of her shows. Holzinger clearly loves bodies and the things they can do. Bodies of all shapes, ages and abilities. The Austrian choreographer and dancer’s career has gone stratospheric over recent years. She’s become a sensation both in the German-speaking theatre world and internationally, touring her work to Asia, Australia and the US. She’s been profiled in German Vogue . Next year she’s been invited to penetrate the opera world. When I step outside the Volksbühne to take some air, two people approach me to ask if I’m selling my ticket.
Her work is fleshy, messy, daring and – crucially - often very funny and playful. The Guardian called her 2019 piece TANZ, the only show of hers so far to make it to the UK, a “gross out, body horror ballet. ” Her work is not just an ick-fest, it is full of classical reference, and an alertness to the history of dance and performance art. Her performers are frequently naked and there are bodily fluids of all kinds on display. There are feats of strength and risk. Bodies are set on fire. There is synchronised shitting and onstage tattooing. There are axle grinders and chainsaws. Previous shows have included acts of hair hanging and body suspension, in which a person is held aloft by a series of hooks pierced through their skin. Audience members have been known to faint ( as discussed by Holzinger here ). When her production of Appolon Musagète played New York's Skirball in early 2020, it made one US critic walk out in repulsion .
There is also tenderness and openness in her work, an exploration of fragility and strength, the whole human spectrum. In her 2015 piece, K ein Applaus für Scheisse , a male performer put his head between Holzinger’s legs and extracted a piece of red string. In TANZ , a woman in her 80s gives birth to a rat-baby. In her 2021 show, A Divine Comedy a woman on a hospital bed is pleasured with a strap-on. Many of her recent pieces also feature machinery, cars, motorcycles, over which the performers drape themselves, the juxtaposition of skin and metal.
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Water, water, everywhere - Ophelia’s Got Talent
The opening set up of Ophelia's Got Talent is that of a cheesy X-Factor-style talent show. Three judges (naked, obviously) watch a series of routines by female performers (also naked, including a aerial pole act and a sword swallower) and deliver their verdicts. This goes on for some time until one of the stunts appears to go catastrophically wrong. There are a few heart-in-mouth moments where no one in the audience is quite sure whether or not this is real (the woman next to me raised her hands to her mouth in alarm). This kind of fake-out is a classic tactic, but when done well, as it is here, it enhances the sense of jeopardy and risk.
Once the talent show format has been dispensed with, Holzinger delivers a series of vignettes all connected to women and water, full of mythic and archetypal imagery. This leads to some gorgeous sequences. There are overhead shots of bodies scything through water (shot via cameras attached to fishing rods). There is tap dancing. There is a chaotic brawl. They sing ‘What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?’. They perform a very entertaining version of ‘No Dames,’ Channing Tatum's number from the Coen Brothers’ Hail Caesar (itself an On the Town pastiche). One of the performers, Saioa Alvarez Ruiz, does a sexy dance with her mobility aid and a kitchen plunger.
Water is the dominant motif. There are not one but three different water tanks on stage. An escapologist’s tank, another larger tank at the back of the stage and an actual swimming pool. Some of the performers spend large chunks of the show submerged. Others dive and splash in the tank at the back, which towards the end turns an ominous shade of red.
If they bother with clothes at all, the performers wear sailor’s tunics and inky mermaid’s tails. The show's host is dressed as a cartoon pirate, with a bottle of rum always close at hand. Even the camera operator is naked save for a pair of waders.
Later on in the piece, a storm is created using an industrial strength wind machine. The performers stagger around, the stage, their tunics billowing and hair streaming. Then a helicopter - a helicopter! - descends from above and the naked women clamber upon its metal chassis. They writhe and grind as the pirate humps the wind machine.
Ophelia does not put in an appearance until mid-way through as one performer recites Gertrude’s description of her death as Holzinger flops about inelegantly, refusing to drown gracefully, to lay Millais-like in the water.
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I've had several conversations about her work that boil down to "ok, but what about the dramaturgy?" and I do understand that reaction. There is a throw everything at the wall approach to Ophelia's Got Talent. It can feel a bit like the dramaturgical equivalent of Gary Oldman in Leon bellowing "Bring me everyone !" (And if you had the resources of the Volksbühne at your disposal, why wouldn't you?).
Elsewhere I’ve heard her work described a welcome alternative to German dick-swinging directing culture, as a new form of feminine dramaturgy. I’m not wholly sold on this, but I do feel some of the criticism levelled at her work - that it is excessive, exploitative, too gross, too over-stuffed, too much - has a different flavour to that directed at her similarly confrontational male peers (at the same time I did find myself wishing the initial talent show segment was shorter and for a bit less pirate banter).
The element of Ophelia’s Got Talent that provoked the most post-show debate was the inclusion of a group of children. The kids, young girls of various ages, join the ensemble on stage halfway through and are there on and off for the rest of the performance, dancing and singing and swimming. Ophelia is billed as a show for over-18s, and there were concerns about questions of consent and their exposure to the material, but their presence also led to one of the most affecting sequence where these children hold up mirrors to the older performers. It was so simple a gesture it bordered on the trite, and yet it was moving, it was powerful.
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Shock and awe, shame and pain
In between the set-pieces in Ophelia’s Got Talent , there are moments in which performers relate personal traumas. Holzinger discusses her childhood eating disorder. Another performer talks about a horrifying sexual assault during which she was raped and tied up. She tells this story while whole laying with her legs spread in front of another performer wearing a swan costume and wielding a speculum. As in much of work there's an ongoing interrogation of the role shame plays in our lives, exposing and exploring the experiences and the biological processes that we hide away, that we keep covered up. I found it interesting that some of these confessional sequences made me more uncomfortable than any of the physical business, though having said that I did find myself holding my breath every time someone got out a pair of rubber gloves and the antiseptic and/or lube, so it obviously was having an effect. For me, the show’s most striking moment followed Holzinger’s discussion of eating disorders, when two performers insert nasal gastric tubes, through which they run water. In this way they become a kind of human Renaissance fountain. It was at once visually witty, physically audacious and resonant.
Holzinger has talked about her delight in physical experimentation, in testing what the body is capable of doing, what it is capable of enduring. To this end she’s gathered a band of performers around her (including professional sword swallower Fibi Eyewalker and pole artist Sophie Duncan), a community of skilled women who use their bodies as instruments.
Is her work shocking? I guess it’s a question of framing. In previous interviews, she has talked about taking inspiration from Coney Island side shows, and about how you can draw a line between these and the body-art experiments of the 70s. Marina Abramovic was carving stars into her stomach decades ago. Most of the extreme acts draw from a long tradition of similar performance, from both sideshow tents and live art spaces. (Over my years of Edinburgh fringe going, I’ve seen multiple nails hammered up nostrils - hell, even Derren Brown does this - and people using their bodies in a variety of creative ways). Holzinger places these things on major German stages, within an institutional frame, and dials the volume up. There’s a sense that Holzinger is having a blast filling these spaces in this way. As she explains in this interview :
“I wanted people to be uncertain of where everything was going right from the start, to be on their toes from the first second – like, “Where the fuck did I end up?” – and for them to assume that there are no boundaries, which to be honest, there are none. If done with care and love, anything is possible.”
Towards the end of the show, following the aborted helicopter rescue, the mood gets darker, the waters murkier. There is a spectacular bottle drop sequence, in which a rain of plastic receptacles tumbles from above, contaminating the pool. The performers drag themselves around the shadowy stage, tails trailing behind them, though I have to say I found the lurch into climate catastrophe and environmental collapse felt a bit like an add-on, an afterthought.
Though Ophelia feels like it has about six potential endings, it finally concludes with a joyous dance to Ed Sheeran’s ‘Bad Habits’ which gets the audience on their feet. Despite the fact that someone got an actual tattoo on stage, it’s this sense of camaraderie, of female strength and community on stage that left the deepest impression, the sheer delight the cast take in undoing and unpacking the way the female form has been presented across art, across time.
This week in European theatre
Each week I do a small round-up of festivals, premieres and other exciting upcoming events. If you have recommendations for this section, please do let me know.
Prima Facie – Eline Arbo, who recently took over the role of artistic director of ITA, replacing Ivo van Hove, helms a new touring production of Suzie Miller’s one-woman play about the failings of the legal system in cases of sexual assault. The performance stars ITA ensemble member Marie Kraakman and opens in De Schuur, Haarlem on 30 th November .
No Horizon - Japanese theatre artist, writer and director Toshiki Okada, whose previous show Doughnuts was selected for Theatertreffen Berlin 2022, returns to the Thalia Theater with a new piece exploring the nature of public spaces. It has its world premiere in Hamburg on 2nd December.
Notre vie dans l‘art – The new play by US playwright and director Richard Nelson – writer of The Apple Family play cycle and The Gabriels premieres his new work in Paris as part of Festival d'Automne. His first new work to be created in France, the play explores an evening spent by Stanislavski and his acting troupe from the Moscow Art Theatre in Chicago in 1923. Performed by the Théâtre du Soleil company, it opens on 6 th December
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OPHELIA'S GOT TALENT
Sa 21.10.2023 20:00 2 Std. 35 Min. Tickets erhältlich beim Tanzquartier
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„Übergieße dich mit Wasser: so sollst du dem Universum ein Brunnen sein." - Kenneth Anger In der Dämmerung des „Age of Aquarius",…
Ophelia again? Why fish out Shakespeare's unfortunate drowning girl again? What more can be said about this icon of femininity? Everything and more, according to iconoclastic choreographer Florentina Holzinger, who loves nothing more than to transform the virtues of yesteryear into contemporary skills. Ophelia's Got Talent is a huge undertaking. On a stage transformed into a water circus ...
Ophelia's Got Talent is made possible in part by ACT: a European collaborative project on ecology, climate change and social transition. In an era of climate breakdown, mass extinction and rising inequality, we join forces in a project about hope, where connections between broad perspectives and local initiatives are central.
A Divine Comedy followed in 2022, premiered at the Ruhrtriennale and shown immediately afterwards at TQW. Florentina Holzinger is currently working at the Volksbühne in Berlin, directed by René Pollesch, where Ophelia's Got Talent premiered and has since been shown in the repertoire.
Florentina Holzinger's striking, bewildering and stomach-churning new piece, "Ophelia's Got Talent," opened the season at the Volksbühne theater in Berlin.
In Florentina Holzinger's gigantic water spectacle, the company enters into a talent show to conduct a physical study on the psychology of water in the 21st century. Water is the element of assimilation and adaptation, a symbol of the boundless capacity to expand, of an eternal, inseparable unity with the outside world.
Ophelia's Got Talent is an extraordinary piece of performance art. This feminist dance spectacle is one of the most technically sophisticated and complicated pieces of theatre currently on in Berlin. The stage is dominated by several swimming pools and water tanks, which the naked all-female cast use to scuba dive, swim through and - in a ...
Florentina Holzinger: Ophelia's Got Talent. In the twilight of the "Age of Aquarius", there's a shift away from technological innovation towards humanitarian concerns and collective responsibilities. The narratives of Ophelia's heiresses have inevitably resurfaced to float like a carpet of algae above the depths and abysses they at once ...
In Florentina Holzinger's gigantic water spectacle, the company enters into a talent show to conduct a physical study on the psychology of water in the 21st century. By Florentina Holzinger A production of Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin and Spirit in co-production with Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Tanzquartier Wien, Arsenic ...
Ophelia's Got Talent. Summer Festival all-time favourite comes to the Elbe with its water spectacle invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen. 44 / 36 / 24 / 14 Euro (conc. from 9 Euro, 50% conc. with Festivalkarte) Possible triggers: live tattoo & piercing, strobe light, loud music. At last years Summer Festival Florentina Holzinger stunned the ...
"Ophelia's Got Talent" von Florentina Holzinger, 2022 KUNO kulturimnorden 861 subscribers Subscribe Subscribed 85 8.5K views 1 year ago ...more Save up to $32 on YouTube TV Enjoy 100+ live TV ...
Book tickets from 20.40 € online or by telephone. Saturday, 04/May/2024 19:30• Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz • Ophelia`s Got Talent. More dates and information in the event calendar of the city portal
"Ophelia's Got Talent" beginnt als Casting-Show mit einer Jury am linken Bühnenrand, eingeführt von einer sehr lauten Piratin, die als Einheizerin durch den Abend führt. Eine Schwertschluckerin, eine Akrobatin, eine Tänzerin und eine Entfesselungskünstlerin treten auf - übrigens alle größtenteils nackt, genau wie die Jury, und größtenteils auf Englisch.
Ophelia's Got Talent in Berlin. Schedule and tickets for the upcoming theater play. Volksbühne Berlin, Mon, 26/09/2022, 19:30. Find latest news, tickets, current info on GoOut. We know about all the best events.
In German and English with surtitles We recommend a minimum age of 18 to attend the performance. Please note: The show contains self-injurious acts, blood, needles, strobe lights, and explicit depiction or descriptions of physical or sexual violence. During the performance of Ophelia's Got Talent, child well-being is ensured.
Mit: Melody Alia, Saioa Alvarez Ruiz, Inga Busch, Renée Copraij, Sophie Duncan, Fibi Eyewalker, Paige A. Flash, Florentina Holzinger, Annina Machaz, Xana Nov...
For her latest big show Ophelia's got talent the revolutionary of performing arts from Vienna found her inspiration among female literary characters associated with water: Leda, Melusine, Ondine, nymphs, Nereids, sirens and, of course, Ophelia.
Florentina Holzinger at the Berlin Volksbühne, where her new work "Ophelia's Got Talent" premieres on Thursday. Gordon Welters for The New York Times. By Thomas Rogers. Sept. 14, 2022 ...
Please note: The show Ophelia's Got Talent contains self-injurious acts, blood, needles, strobe lights, explicit depiction or description of physical or sexual violence. Tickets: 16-42€. Pour water on thyself: thus shalt thou be a fountain to the universe. (Kenneth Anger) In the twilight of the 'Age of Aquarius', there's a shift ...
Premiere: Ophelia's Got Talent in Berlin. Schedule and tickets for the upcoming theater play. Volksbühne Berlin, Thu, 15/09/2022, 19:30. Find latest news, tickets, current info on GoOut. We know about all the best events.
Water, water, everywhere - Ophelia's Got Talent The opening set up of Ophelia's Got Talent is that of a cheesy X-Factor-style talent show. Three judges (naked, obviously) watch a series of routines by female performers (also naked, including a aerial pole act and a sword swallower) and deliver their verdicts.
Ophelia's Got Talent is a huge undertaking. On a stage transformed into a water circus, the Viennese director invites a rigorously feminine, intergenerational, and dynamic cast to lay bare the bride and her trail of feminine stereotypes. ... Practical info Accessibility & inclusion Multilingual shows Tickets and memberships The shuttles The ...
Eine Produktion der Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz und Spirit in Koproduktion mit Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Tanzquartier Wien, Arsenic Lausanne, asphalt Festival, Gessnerallee Zürich, Kampnagel Internationales Sommerfestival und deSingel Antwerpen. Gefördert von der Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien und vom Bundesministerium für ...