Premiered in Vienna in 2019, Florentina Holzinger’s Tanz has gained notoriety (walkouts, fainting) and trailed content warnings (beware of nudity, blood, needles, strobes, graphic violence), as well as garnering lofty commentary in art magazines. Which meant I was entirely unprepared for it to be … funny. Albeit in a gleefully exploitative, gross-out way.
Tanz is the aftermath of an almighty crash between romantic ballet and body horror. Following the two-act structure of ballets such as Giselle and La Sylphide, the piece starts in a social world, then moves into a fantastical one. Holzinger’s first act is set in a ballet studio, where a gracefully aged ballet-mistress (the marvellous Claire Philippart, naked throughout) coaxes four women through the time-honoured exercises of ballet class – strain combined with beauty, poetic aspiration with piano tinkles – as well as into removing their clothes. Surrounding them are the figures of other women, likewise disrobing, notably Annina Machaz as a one-toothed witch, straddling a vacuum cleaner hose by way of a broomstick.
