2023-12-04 14:48:43
The Austrian features around ten performers in a sulphurous ballet.
The sylph is an ethereal creature, the paragon of 19th century romantic ballet. Suffice it to say, another era. There is no sylph in dance by Florentina Holzinger, well not really. However, for two hours, ballerinas will rise on blood-red pointe shoes as if they had escaped from a Dario Argento giallo, with their buns undone. As for the classical bar, it will be provided by an 82-year-old teacher, the incredible Beatrice Cordua.
In two acts, mixing the real and the supernatural, Holzinger destroys academic dance as much as she cherishes it, claiming a definitive autonomy of the body. At the time of his “splendour”, the Flemish Jan Fabre imposed on the world his “warriors of beauty”, not so distant. But where Fabre intended to manipulate bodies, Florentina Holzinger gives power back to women. “No more faking your orgasms, times have changed”balance Cordua.
Discipline transgressive
dance therefore starts from a codified grammar, inherited from the romantic ballet, with many bends and round legs to end on another planet, something like the triumph of the Amazons. The cult of beauty, shared by many in the dance world, is taking a hit. On the immaculate set – which will not stay that way for long, we suspect, the designer invites personalities with multiple skills, stuntwomen, dancers, bikers.
With a strong sense of staging, Florentina Holzinger plunges her ritual into a large bath of hemoglobins. Viscera, childbirth, masturbation, even if everything is simulated here, dance doesn’t do lace. Or the tutu, so popular with choreographers of past centuries. Sensitive souls refrain. But certain images will leave an impression, such as this capillotracted soloist rising into the air. Florentina Holzinger also gives of herself, on stage as well as in a monologue summoning spiritualism. His way of playing with the public, without provocation, is akin to great art like that evening in Zurich. We won’t say more.
The second act of dance does not, unfortunately, quite have the strength of the first. As if the troupe were standing on the edge of a precipice of ideas. Nevertheless, this wildly beautiful piece will not leave you indifferent. A weapon of massive distraction, Florentina Holzinger’s dance is ultimately not so far from this stylistic “revolution” specific to romantic ballet. The pointe shoes then allowed the dancer to float in the air, or more precisely to give the impression of doing so. The rebels of dance, in turn, hover over the debates in a high-class feminist ritual. At the risk of splashing you with their… talent.
dance by Florentina Holzinger at the Grande Halle de la Villette, Paris, from December 14 to 16, 2023.
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