Loud cries of extreme discomfort are echoing around a former warehouse on the outskirts of the German city of Schwerin as six women, all clad in black, edge towards the limits of their pain. “Oh,” one woman wails as she squirms on her plastic chair, “this one is so hard.”
Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger is famous for working with performers who can endure more pain than most: the all-female casts of her shows regularly include sword-swallowers, pole-dancers, Japanese bondage artists and “hair hangers” – who are able to suspend their entire bodyweights from their ponytails.
