Florentina Holzinger

Headshot of Holzinger in an indoor environment with a mostly blank expression
Holzinger in an online HowlRound Theatre Commons session in 2020

Florentina Holzinger (born 1986) is an Austrian choreographer, director and performance artist. Her stage work involves nude all-female casts and sexual acts. She is based in the Netherlands.[1]

Early life

Holzinger was born in Vienna in 1986,[2] the daughter of a pharmacist and a lawyer.[3] As a child, she was baptised and confirmed Catholic, but left the Church as a young adult "to avoid paying tax".[4] She began studying to be an architect, but soon lost interest, saying that it involved "too much desk time".[5] She studied choreography at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) at the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam.[2] In 2018, Holzinger was living and working in Vienna and Amsterdam.[6]

Career

Holzinger's 2020 dance work Apollon at NYU Skirball, partly based on George Balanchine's 1928 work Apollo, was called a "feminist freak show" by The New Yorker, with a nude all-female cast, and Apollo as a mechanical bull that they ride for pleasure, along with "playful self-mutilation, dildo use, defecation, and coprophagia".[1] As of 2024, she is an artist-in-residence at Volksbühne Berlin.[7] In August 2024, Bergen Kunsthall presented Havneetyde/Harbour Etude, a new large-scale commission, with a warning that it "will contain explicit depictions of self-mutilation, piercing, needles, blood, loud sounds, and nudity".[7]

Her first opera production, Sancta, based on Paul Hindemith's 1920s expressionist opera Sancta Susanna, was staged in October 2024 at the Mecklenburg State Theatre in Schwerin by the Stuttgart State Opera. It includes live piercing, unsimulated sexual intercourse among the all-female cast and plentiful (fake and real) blood.[8] Over the opening weekend, eighteen audience members required medical treatment for severe nausea.[8]

References

  1. ^ a b Brian Seibert (7 February 2020). "Florentina Holzinger". The New Yorker. Retrieved 11 October 2024.
  2. ^ a b "Florentina Holzinger". Wiener Festwochen. Retrieved 10 October 2024.
  3. ^ Thomas Rogers (14 September 2022). "Florentina Holzinger Makes Everyone Uncomfortable". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 October 2024.
  4. ^ Oltermann, Philip (10 June 2024). "Bring on the naked rollerskating nuns! The wild visions of Florentina Holzinger". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 October 2024.
  5. ^ "Artist Entrance: Florentina Holzinger". Etcetera (in Flemish). Retrieved 12 October 2024.
  6. ^ "Artist Residencies". Luma Arles. Retrieved 12 October 2024.
  7. ^ a b "2024: Florentina Holzinger / Bergen Kunsthall". Bergen Kunsthall. Retrieved 11 October 2024.
  8. ^ a b Oltermann, Philip (10 October 2024). "18 treated for severe nausea in Stuttgart after opera of live sex and piercing". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 October 2024.