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The Guardian
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
A Berlin audience has fake faeces thrown at them – and is moved to tears. So am I
What would you do if the world was to end tomorrow? The premise itself may be both timeless and timely at this moment when authoritarianism is on the rise globally. But that's not really what causes the nail-biting excitement at the doorstep of Volksbühne theatre in Berlin. On a chilly June evening, a predominantly female and queer crowd of all ages gathers here to see, or rather experience, A Year Without Summer, the newest play by the infamous Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger. It's the anticipation of Holzinger's trademark body horror that unsettles and attracts us, the crowd. And the question: how much can we take? 'Europe's hottest director', as the Guardian described 39-year-old Holzinger last year, is not only known for her work at the Volksbühne but mesmerises and shocks audiences all over the world. Her all female-assigned cast of different ages, origins and abilities dances, bleeds, defecates and swallows swords on stage, naked. Nudity has a solid tradition in the performance arts context, and is anything but radical. But informed by social media, our contemporary visual habits confine the naked body to porn. If the body doesn't belong to a cisgender man, it is an object to be censored and regulated. Seeing Holzinger on stage, however, we look at it as a weapon, a tool and sometimes a joke. A scandal arose last year, when Holzinger staged her opera Sancta in Stuttgart, with rollerskating naked nuns having lesbian sex on stage. Eighteen audience members had to be treated for severe nausea. The subsequent headlines in the international press were a badge of honour to Holzinger; she wears them printed in black letters on her white T-shirt when talking to the press: 'Went to the opera, vomited.' Protests by Christian fundamentalists against Holzinger's works have only added to the hype. All Berlin performances of A Year without Summer were sold out within minutes of its announcement. Holzinger's shows have enormous budgets and are always co-productions involving several institutions around the globe. Her latest co-producers include Factory International, in Manchester, and Rising Melbourne, where the piece will be shown at a later time. But what is this fascination all about? How can we obsess over bleeding dancers when we seem collectively desensitised by news images of war and death? Why do we pay to see naked people taking a shit on a theatre stage? And will they do it again? What I instantly notice about the sets of A Year Without Summer is the absence of the wasteful extravagance usually associated with Holzinger. On-stage swimming pools, helicopters flying in the auditorium – the decadence of Holzinger's previous productions is no doubt silently frowned upon by many of her colleagues. Especially in times of drastic austerity that are driving so many artists into poverty, or out of Berlin to more affordable European cities. But also, in terms of sustainability, I wonder if thousands of gallons of water in two giant tanks were really necessary to honour the mother of all water corpses, as the choreographer did in her 2022 play Ophelia's Got Talent. Necessary, maybe not. But possible, if Holzinger's profitable name is involved. The scenery of A Year Without Summer consists, in strong contrast, of only a glass box, two trampolines, an inflatable torso and a lot of thick haze. Holzinger's new minimalism sharpens the focus on her narrative. The story unfolds in 1816, the year after a volcano erupted in today's Indonesia and changed the global climate for years to come. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, so we are told, under the ashy sky of that very first year without summer. The blend of an apocalyptic atmosphere and the creation of artificial humans is a perfect backdrop to what Holzinger and her team seem most interested in: grotesque interventions in the body. We witness butchering doctors, a fake birth out of Holzinger's own cut-open thigh ('It's a musical!') and an ultimate facelift performed on a dancer hung by meat hooks piercing through their cheeks and temples. All of this is undeniably hard to watch, but also beautifully staged, like a Renaissance painting. Personal hospital stories told by cast members are merged with musical performances about racist medical science and eugenics. Immortality as the main goal of future medicine is discussed as both a conviction and salvation. Even Freud comes on stage to perform his trashy horror of the vagina, examining and declaring it as a wound caused by castration. There is really nothing subtle about that. The omnipresent question still remains compelling enough: aren't we all monsters anyway? But then there is also tenderness, which is new to Holzinger's work and makes this play especially intriguing. This time, the undressing of the cast is part of the performance. The imminent apocalypse at the beginning of the story gives way to a very long romantic intro, with couples dancing slowly, cuddling, making out, until they finally lie on top of each other naked and simulate an orgy. If the world was to end tomorrow, the play suggests, we should come close and warm each other. Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion Particularly when the caresses are not of an erotic nature, they deliver much-needed utopian moments, between all the splatter and jokey scenes. Several cast members are elderly people in wheelchairs, who towards the end of the show are being cared for affectionately by other dancers, whose props indicate they are nurses and doctors. This quite extensive scene of generosity and gratitude gets suspiciously heartwarming, until the patients start defecating in streams and turn this idyllic moment of compassion into a horror depiction of plain humanness. The mere presence of brown fluids instantly makes us uncomfortable. The nurses start vomiting the same liquid (out of oxygen tubes filled with paint) and get all tangled up while trying to clean up the mess. Tissues of fake faeces are thrown at the audience. Few spectators leave the room. Most are in awe of this incarnation of the contradictory nature of vulnerability: it's lovable and disgusting and horrifying and banal at the same time. What follows this mess is a very touching climax, the end that says 'No End' on two big screens. All lights stay on. The ambivalent immortality theme is embodied by the 82-year-old former ballerina Beatrice Cordua, who sits in a wheelchair now and has told the audience earlier in the show that she will soon die from lung cancer and how sad she is about it. For the applause, Holzinger pushes Cordua's wheelchair to the front. A teary-eyed audience gives the terminally ill ballerina a last standing ovation. She blows a kiss at us and leaves, while an ice skater turns endless pirouettes on a small square of ice. We're not monsters, I think to myself. We are just mortal and fascinated by how ambiguous that feels. Fatma Aydemir is a Berlin-based author, novelist, playwright and a Guardian Europe columnist
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
A naked female dwarf Nazi, a lesbian orgy and explicit sex acts: Director whose last show left audience members needing medical attention shocks Germany with new play
The creator of a divisive body horror opera that left audience members needing medical attention has brought out a new production featuring sex acts, blood and an actress with dwarfism playing a naked Nazi doctor. Choreographer Florentina Holzinger, 39, is famous across the German-speaking world for her radical works, which usually feature nudity, dangerous stunts, unsimulated sex and physical violence. She staged Sancta in October last year, describing the show as a 'feminist mass' and angering Christians with its provocative depictions of Jesus and the Pope and naked nuns roller-skating. Now the controversial choreographer has produced her new play, 'A Year Without Summer', which once again, is not for the faint hearted. 'In my new show, I portray monsters from medical history,' Holzinger explained to German news outlet RBB. 'Who are the people who exercise control over the female body? What is happening in the service of scientific and medical progress?' The play tackles issues including cosmetic surgery, anti-ageing and living conditions in nursing homes, and features an all-female cast, many of whom are aged between 65 and 90. It opens with a dance which turns into an orgy between the women, with a giant female torso inflated and performers tumbling out of its vagina in a wild display, according to BILD. Actress Saioa Alvarez - who in Sancta portrayed the Pope on a spinning robotic arm - is said to outrageously portray a naked Josef Mengele, the Nazi regime's 'Angel of Death' who conducted depraved experiments on his victims. A trigger warning for audiences cautions that the play includes explicit sexual acts, blood and bodily fluids, and self-harm. At one point, a dancer is seen having stitches removed with tweezers from a fresh wound on her leg, out of which a miniature baby figurine is pulled out - a metaphor for 'the birth of a musical'. As well as singing and dancing, performers are said to bathe in slime inside a glass box, interact with robot dogs and have their skin pierced. The play ends with a woman receiving what is described in huge letters projected on the stage as 'the ultimate facelift'. Fish hooks are said to be driven through her eyebrows and cheeks, distorting her facial features. The performance was reportedly met with applause from the Berlin audience. The show is meant to be set in 1816 - the year that became known as the Year Without a Summer due to unusually low temperatures in the northern hemisphere following the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. It was also the year that Mary Shelley wrote the first draft of Frankenstein while holidaying on the banks of Lake Geneva - with the creation of the monster a theme of the play. 'We found it interesting to explore the year 1816 because it shows how environmental events have a profound influence on art and literature,' Holzinger said. 'Especially now, we found it interesting to also address the fear of nature.' The play's description states that Holzinger's 'spectacular and physically intense pieces, she incorporates references from the history of performance and dance and relates them to other disciplines such as kickboxing, artistry, striptease and circus. 'Her works consciously play with the shifting boundaries between high and pop culture and are always feminist manifestos. 'She critically examines the representation of femininity and reflects on body discipline and gender images in dance.' Her previous show Sancta was met with protests when it was staged in Stuttgart, with security personnel needed to guard the performances. A total of 18 audience members at two shows in the city required treatment for nausea and shock, according to German media. Holzinger subsequently suggested that those attending should have known what they were getting themselves in for, telling objectors: 'If you don't want to see it, don't come. 'The performance expressly refers to explicit content,' she went on, seemingly referring to the many trigger warnings on the show's website. She added defiantly: 'Anyone who can't stand depictions of violence shouldn't go to a show that draws inspiration from the Catholic Church.' The show was met with outcry from Church figures in Austria when it was performed at the Vienna Festival last June. Archbishop of Salzburg Franz Lackner said the work went beyond the boundaries of free artistic expression by 'seriously offending believers' religious feelings and convictions.' But as well as sparking outrage, it also received glowing reviews, with one critic writing: 'A scandal? No, joy. Overwhelming joy. 'Holzinger is directing a musical theatre [production] for the first time, and the result is so clever, so funny, so incredibly well put together that you are truly astonished.' A Year Without Summer has also had a positive reception from some, with critics from Germany daily paper Spiegel calling the performance 'fantastic, touching array of images.' A critic from Berliner Morgenpost wrote that Holzinger 'once again demonstrates why she is one of the superstars of the arts.' The upcoming performances of A Year Without Summer are all but sold out, with only a handful of tickets remaining and new dates expected to be announced.
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At Theatertreffen Festival, Bodies Do the Talking
In this year's Theatertreffen, the annual Berlin festival showcasing the best theater from the German-speaking world, two of the 10 selected works — narrowed down from 600 by a jury — are choreography-led productions where bodies, rather than mouths, do most of the talking. The first of these, 'Sancta,' is the brainchild of the Austrian choreographer, director and performance artist Florentina Holzinger. Like all her shows — including 'Tanz,' which played earlier this year at NYU Skriball in New York — it is comes with trigger warnings, this time for blood, needles, 'self-injurious acts' and sexual violence. Holzinger, who will represent Austria at next year's Venice Biennale, is known for traversing dance, theater and visual art, and 'Sancta' is her first foray into classical music. She has reworked Paul Hindemith's scandalous 1922 one-act opera 'Sancta Susanna,' about a nun tormented by forbidden desire, to critique the patriarchal structures of the Roman Catholic church. When 'Sancta' played in Stuttgart, Germany, last year, the opera house there said some nauseated audience members needed medical attention, and in Vienna, Austrian bishops denounced the show as a 'disrespectful caricature.' At the Volksbühne in Berlin, 'Sancta' opens with a rendition of Hindemith's score by three wild-eyed singers in habits before morphing into a provocative variety show. Naked performers kiss, grope, and grind against a towering metal crucifix. Roller-skating nuns glide along a halfpipe and karate kick suspended metal sheets. In one stomach-churning scene, a strip of skin is sliced from a performer's chest, fried and fed to another cast member in a techno-scored tableau evoking the Last Supper. If Holzinger's intent is to shock, she succeeds — but her efforts also backfire. The relentless barrage of subversive scenes means that, over the show's nearly three-hour run time, it's easy to become desensitized. Its most powerful moments lean into topical humor, rather than excess: When a performer with dwarfism walks onstage dressed in papal robes and dryly declares, 'It's official,' she elicits big laughs from the audience. (It was the day of Pope Leo XIV's election.) Later, the performer proclaims herself the first lesbian pope, to more enthusiastic laughter. Though the cast of female, trans and nonbinary performers finished the show drenched in blood, its members all embraced joyfully, bonded by collectively pushing their bodies to the brink. The applause was rapturous: While few would be willing to perform this ferocious sisterhood's tasks, in Berlin, at least, they seem to appreciate watching them. There is also a supportive onstage community in Theatertreffen's other choreographer-led work, albeit of a very different kind. That piece, called 'Kontakthof — Echoes of '78,' revisits the German choreographer Pina Bausch's 'Kontakthof,' a landmark work of contemporary dance. Nine members of Bausch's cast — now in their 70s, with some nearing 80 — have reunited to perform the roles they created in the late 1970s. They share the stage with ghostly, gray-scale projections from the original show, depicting their younger selves and some absent fellow performers, a few of whom have passed away. Set in a community hall, the original 'Kontakthof' explored dating rituals, longing and power dynamics between the sexes. The male and female performers struggle for dominance, including in a scene where they shout the names of body parts at one another with increasing aggression and struggle in a kind of choreographic tug of war. Many of the original sequences are faithfully reworked in 'Kontakthof — Echoes of '78,' yet the Australian dancer and choreographer Meryl Tankard, who was a member of Bausch's company, has reframed some and condensed others. The new show is a love letter to the company and its artistic achievements, but also a bittersweet depiction of the unavoidable losses that come with aging. Dressed in sharp suits and elegant evening gowns, the performers haunt the stage like phantoms. Surrounded by empty chairs, they sway alone in ballroom holds, their partners conspicuously absent. Later, they scream, slam doors and run in circles while laughing maniacally, tormented by their inability to move on. Negative memories surface, including in a chilling scene in which Tankard mirrors a film of her younger body being manipulated by a group of men. Her older form recoils, flinching from touches that took place almost 50 years ago, in a powerful depiction of physical trauma. There is celebration, too: Smiling flirtatiously, the cast walks resolutely together in processional lines — a Bausch signature — performing a cycle of repeating hand gestures, arm raises and subtle shifts in posture, set to popular German songs of the 1930s. To more rapid jazz, wild, whipping motions bubble up in the performers' limbs. Their gestures are now rougher around the edges than in the projections from the 1970s, and the performers seem to be digging deep into their muscle memories to recall the choreography. Charming, witty duets also reveal a chemistry that comes from years of working together. A skippy, coquettish exchange between Tankard and Josephine Anne Endicott, a fellow Australian, is a highlight, as is a later scene where Endicott cheekily mocks another performer's hip swivels, which are no match for the projections. When the scrim on which those are beamed is lifted at the end of the second act, and the cast sits at the front of the stage to speak about their daily lives, wishes and regrets, we gain a deeper insight into the personalities that shaped Bausch's revered repertoire. Bausch led Tanztheater Wuppertal from 1973 until her death in 2009, and it must be tough for the company's current performers, many of whom never met Bausch, to live up to the figures of that time. But 'Kontakthof — Echoes of '78' shows that honoring the past, while not being constrained by it, can make old works newly relevant. There is room for both melancholic reflection and transgressive provocation on contemporary stages, and the moving body is a powerful tool to express both.
