Precarious Moves

How is a body`s movement impacted, when its relationship to its surrounding space is fundamentally unstable and vulnerable? At the centre of “Precarious Moves”, a biographical solo by choreographer and performer Michael Turinsky, is the questioning of both very personal and collective needs and necessities. Turinsky works with the concept of “crip time”: people in wheelchairs experience space and time differently than non-disabled people. Turinsky opposes the imperative of integrating disabled bodies into current concepts of mobility. After all, slowness also has a quality that should not be lost sight of in a society that is constantly in the fast lane. “Precarious Moves” is an ironic and humorous performance that explores the body’s connection to the world through which it moves. Turinsky sensitively introduces the audience to boundaries and limitations, but also to possibilities for changing the status quo. The play was awarded the most important Austrian theatre prize “Nestroy” in 2021. “Turinsky’s solo performance, which is as intelligent as it is sensual, is utopian in the best sense of the word,” said the jury’s statement.

Michael Turinsky lives and works as a choreographer, performer and theoretician in Vienna. He is interested in a comprehensive examination of the specific phenomenology of the body labelled as “disabled”, its relationship to temporality and rhythm, gender and sexuality, visibility and invisibility. But he also engages intensively with discourses focussing on the productive tension between politics and aesthetics. Turinsky has suffered from cerebral palsy since birth and is confined to a wheelchair. From 1998 to 2005 Turinsky studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. As a performer he has worked with Bert Gstettner, Barbara Kraus, Legitimate Bodies/Robin Dingemans/Mick Bryson or Teresa Vittucci, among others. The performance “Ravemachine” by Turinsky and choreographer Doris Uhlich was awarded the “Nestroy” in 2017. Michael Turinsky has given lectures and workshops at the Universities of Linz and Salzburg, at the College Art Association in New York, at the Tanzquartier Wien and as part of the ImPulsTanz Festival, among others, and has been published in various journals.

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The press says:

“Turinsky is ironic, intellectual, playful. The studied philosopher presents his fate in such an unsentimental and vivid way that you have to laugh uncontrollably, yet cry in other moments, because you realise what a struggle the smallest everyday tasks present or even tasks that four-year-olds can solve in half the time – let alone to be able to physically endure such a fantastic solo. Turinsky’s measure of time is actually the more beautiful.” (FAZ)

“Turinsky’s actions on stage have a sensuality and delicacy that are very moving. And whilst many movements seem complicated to him, it is his thinking that is so agile.” (Kölner Stadtanzeiger)

“Michael Turinsky shows in ‘Precarious Moves’ that his comparative immobility is just a kind of mobility we are simply not used to yet.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

“Michael Turinsky is a dancer, performer and actor, and with his movements he strikes a blow straight to the heart of the audience.” (Tanzschrift)