Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: What are the main themes of the production TANZ?

Florentina Holzinger: It’s specifically about romantic ballet and the representation of femininity on stage. I have a relatively large cast of women from different disciplines around me—unlike my previous works, which were mainly duets.

Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: Are you also addressing the issue of the representation of women on stage?

Florentina Holzinger: I’m really trying to distance myself from the word “woman,” partly because we’ve been somewhat labeled with this “women’s feminism label,” which isn’t a bad thing. But I’m more concerned with the construction of female identity than with just having women on stage. This is often linked to the fact that we approach male-dominated things, such as weightlifting in the production “Apollon.” I’m a bit critical of lumping everything together like that, because we all grew up in a time when such things can exist beyond gender and are even widely accepted in the mainstream. At the moment, I like to express it by saying that we are concerned with the construction of femininity on stage and not with being a woman per se – because what does that even mean?

Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: Is it about questioning social constructs?

Florentina Holzinger: Yes, exactly. Gender is not necessarily something you are born with, but rather a social construct that forces you into certain patterns or makes you fall into them. Traditional theater is also full of these patterns, and we deal with them on stage. That’s why I like to take on traditional forms such as ballet, because the relationship is so black and white here. I ask myself: even though we live in this day and age and everyone has a very open understanding of gender, how can such art forms still take place on classical stages or in opera houses without being commented on? And that’s why I took on the commentary.

Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: So the approach is to critically question traditions that have developed over decades, centuries?

Florentina Holzinger: I like to call it “analysis.” I am interested in mechanisms and transparency in general. That’s where my fascination with ballet comes from: that things that don’t normally appear before the viewer’s eyes should be revealed, that they should be truly illuminated. For a dancer, for example, this includes training to achieve her form. Or the training that an athlete does to achieve a certain form. These are all constructs of bodies, and I am drawn to analyzing them and working out certain themes. In ballet in particular, there is always a flirtation with illusion and things like weightlessness and all these concepts. What interested me in TANZ was making transparent what the exercise for that is. But it’s not just about criticism in the sense of viewing it from a negative standpoint, such as how classical ballet has damaged the female body, but that you can still see it as an enjoyable activity. And for me, this is precisely what makes the topic interesting: the dancer’s self-control. It’s a very complex topic, especially in the current discussion. It’s about how you can make decisions for yourself, in terms of your own practice, but also how you want to present your body or how you want to treat it. So who says you can’t discipline your body in this way because it’s not healthy? And let’s take the work on stage: for the outside observer, it’s never really transparent what steps someone has to take to get where they want to be, and whether it was a good or bad experience for that person. It says nothing about the conditions under which the pieces were produced. These are things we like to play with.

Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: You initially draw inspiration from people from different scenes such as tattooing, piercing, or branding. How does an artistic concept then emerge?

Florentina Holzinger: “Apollon” was a classic example of this. I watched these “sideshows” on Coney Island, where people do things that are meant to shock and are also associated with a lot of pain. It was completely clear to me that there isn’t really much difference between the work of these pain artists and what a classical ballerina does with her body. Not in the sense of glorifying violence, of course, but simply that it’s a certain way of using the body.

Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: Ultimately, you’re absolutely right. If I’m a competitive athlete, discipline my body, and then run through the desert, do a marathon, or whatever, then I have to focus and concentrate incredibly hard. I assume your artists do that too when they have rings implanted in their bodies and are pulled up by them. I can observe the tension and concentration that goes into this. Do you mean this phenomenon when you talk about discipline and how far you can go with special training? You can demand a lot from your body, more than we sometimes believe?

Florentina Holzinger: Yes, that’s the power of training, or that’s the whole point of training—in the case of ballet, but even of these ‘sideshow’ things. These are certain types of techniques, some of which have actually been developed over centuries, and which you can learn. It’s about getting the body closer to certain things. Sport is most explicit in this regard when you look at an athlete’s training. But I don’t want to go over the limit, I want to push the limit – so that it is also possible to do other things with the body. Suspension training is a bit of a different story, of course, because it’s not something you train physically every day; it’s more of a mental preparation, I’d say.

Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: A wise person once said: Contact arises at the boundary. Is that where it starts to get interesting for you?

Florentina Holzinger: I’m not entirely sure what exactly this boundary is supposed to be, because it’s not a fixed line. But yes, that’s always been my personal interest, especially in relation to the body of a dancer: How can one be more than just this physical shell? And how can one use dance to become more than just the body? It’s about this “We lead to take it serious to be more than human in a certain way, or to attempt to be more than human” – which is connected to the question of the meaning of life, I suppose. What’s interesting about ‘making art’ is that you can develop your imagination to the point: Yes, there’s more!

Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: Absolutely. It sounds like you don’t work with technique, but rather look for impulses that come into action through improvisation, impulses that you can’t think of beforehand. Are you a choreographer who develops and stages in the moment?

Florentina Holzinger: I’m definitely a fan of technique. And as a choreographer, I love the formal approach. Even if it might not seem that way to people who see my shows, there’s actually very little improvisation. And I’m very much concerned with composition.

Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: Something very existential in your work is touch, embracing the other person’s body. So my question at this point: How much have you missed this contact, how much do you miss it at the moment? How exactly do you work? And on the other hand: How much do you miss the contact with the audience, when we talk about contact?

Florentina Holzinger: Basically, I see this Covid break as a certain kind of break. I’ve always had this in my work routine, these extremely socially concentrated periods that alternate with phases of loneliness and withdrawal. But this was a particularly long phase. And the most unsettling thing was not knowing whether this was a break or a permanent state. But this lack of contact often suits me as a work routine anyway. Every now and then, I like to be truly socially undernourished for a certain period so that I can then find it cool to work so intensively with people again. I’ve been back in full rehearsal for a month now, and I have to say, I’ve really enjoyed it, experimenting with other bodies again. That’s the work I do. We come to the studio together; I’ve prepared certain things that I want to try out and that I’ve never tried before myself. And then we experiment and try things out. Things I thought about during my solitude phase are finally taking shape, and I think that’s incredibly cool. Actually, even more important than the shows you do then. I’ve missed that rehearsal phase with other people. And right now, at least here in Austria, rehearsals are going on as usual; we can do anything. That’s why you’re back in your normal work rhythm very quickly, which has always been an exceptional situation. You have certain rules you follow in order to be able to do extraordinary things with other people. And whether it’s with Covid or without, other rules simply come along. It doesn’t make that much of a difference.

Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: How strongly does the engagement with communities influence your work, or what does the engagement with communities even mean?

Florentina Holzinger: In general, my inspiration really comes from all sorts of artistic disciplines, and my approach is very interdisciplinary. That’s also important to me. And that’s more related to this community question. I always emphasize that what I do isn’t actually community work, because it’s art, and it’s not meant to serve a social purpose. For me, theater or dance work is community-making. Especially when you’re putting on larger productions, you’re also designing communities. And I find that so interesting, as a utopian approach. And it’s definitely important to me in this interdisciplinary approach that I have conversations with a wide variety of people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just stage people, about specific topics that interest me at the time. When I work with other communities, it’s definitely on stage.

Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: You work with professionals who bring the necessary expertise in their field.

Florentina Holzinger: Especially with regard to the body, you can look much further than just the dance realm. I’m probably much more interested in what people are doing who I haven’t seen much of on stage.

Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen: In culture, classification into genres is an issue. Is it dance or performance, is it spoken theater, or is it this or that? You’re certainly confronted with that day and night. Has anything changed over the years? Has it become a bit more open, are these attributions decreasing, and are you happy that it’s more about the question of art and no longer about attribution? Are there any developments in this area? How would you describe them?

Florentina Holzinger: That was, of course, a bit of a joke about the awards I received last year, those theater awards or even directing awards, because I would never have seen myself as a director. But I think they’re significant in that they’re obviously breaking open these genres and suddenly opening up conversations about the fact that theater can also be part of the genre. I’m not at all interested in differentiating between these genres, nor in fitting myself into such labels. I mean, it’s probably just because it’s so vintage that I like to associate myself with dance. I suppose it’s because dance is always connected to physical skill and I like to be playful with that. And because, of course, for me the body is dominant in my work, in contrast to text or things like that; the body is simply my main medium. But that doesn’t mean that the dancers can’t have a voice too.