Tanz Your Heart Out

“Tanz” opens on a ballet class like none I’ve ever attended. Onstage are two portable barres and four dancers in rehearsal clothes stretching and warming up. Eighty-three-year-old ballerina Beatrice Cordua teaches from a wheelchair, naked. “The toes are the tongue of the foot,” she declares as the dancers tendu at the barre. “You should take your clothes off,” she suggests. “Muscle is beauty. Muscle is movement.” Soon the stage is filled with curvy, tattooed female flesh. A series of grand tendus reveals glimpses of vulva that challenge my sense of modesty. A familiar floor stretch leaves nothing to the imagination.

Performance

Florentina Holzinger's “Tanz”

Place

NYU Skirball, New York, NY, February 2025

Words

Karen Hildebrand

Florentina Holzinger's “Tanz.” Photograph by Nada Žgank

Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger uses the two act structure of a Romantic ballet in “Tanz” to riff on the objectification of women. She amplifies the role of pain in a dancer’s life, transforming it to an act of courageous sacrifice. She throws in witchcraft and animalism along with a biting sense of humor. And she’s not afraid to disgust you with more than a little female blood and gore. With a cast of thirteen performers, all women trained in ballet and circus arts, “Tanz” is confrontational, cringe-worthy, chaotic—in all, quite an uncomfortable way to spend a Saturday night. And yet, NYU Skirball was sold out and the audience stood for an extended ovation.

The Romantic ballets (think “Giselle,” or “Swan Lake”) depict women as sensual yet innocent creatures who need protection. The white tulle of their costumes as they pas de bourrée en pointe emphasize a fairy-like, ethereal presence. With “Tanz,” Holzinger takes a feminist perspective. In her ballet class, women develop a kind of super strength. Her heroine is not a victim who dies of a broken heart. She’s a body builder.

As the Act I ballet class continues, we encounter a pants-less, one-toothed witch who straddles a vacuum cleaner wand as if flying a broomstick. A women turns a video camera on the ballet students to project close-up views, granting us permission to stare with voyeuristic fascination. Two women lower their heads into buckets and wash their hair. Others apply makeup. It seems that even strong women must make themselves beautiful. And self-sufficient—one ballet lesson is how to masturbate.

Florentina Holzinger's “Tanz.” Photograph by Nada Žgank

Despite the irregularities, Cordua at times reminds me of my own dance teachers who would pause class to tell stories about their famous teachers. While her students stand idle, Cordua talks about her own studies in New York with Balanchine and later with Cunningham and Cage. I’m not sure if she’s in character here—it seems more that she’s speaking directly to her NYC audience.

The dancers don pointe shoes and aerial riggings drop from above. Three women clamp their hair to ropes that assist their rise en pointe. They hover inches off the floor. One hangs mid-air and twirls. Two women straddle gleaming motorcycles suspended from the fly loft, head and taillights flashing, to perform a dreamy aerial dance. It’s one of the best moments of “Tanz,” calling to mind Playboy centerfolds of yore.

Before Act II, Holzinger herself steps forward, wearing only a cast from shoulder to wrist (recent surgery, she explains), to welcome the audience, talk about the show—and also scam a man in the audience out of $200 cash in an elaborate feint of hand magic scheme.

Florentina Holzinger's “Tanz.” Photograph by Nada Žgank

Going back to what we know about Act II of the Romantic ballets, we are prepared to find retribution and redemption in the supernatural. Here, Holzinger’s imagery brings to mind “La Sylphide.” Our four ballet students are now sylphs performing in pas de bourrées en pointe amidst the fog shrouded forest. Our witch is now Madge, in full hooded cape with long crooked nose. A wolf crouches and makes slurping sounds. And what’s going on with two woman and a massage table at upstage left?

The video camera zooms into the lap of Cordua in the wheelchair as she graphically gives birth to a rat. After that, basically all hell breaks loose. There’s a papier mâché pinata, several ghosts in white bedsheets, a paint gun, revving of the hanging motorcycles, impalement of the wolf. The sylphs crouch bloody, as if in the final scene of “The Dying Swan.” The piece de resistance is a ritualized bit where a rigger hangs a performer by the “wings” of her back, her skin impaled with hooks. We watch the piercing/impaling process close-up via the video camera. Not for the faint of heart. Once in the air, the performer strikes a position of flight, arms wide, feet (clad in chunky athletic shoes) peddling the air. She beams a state of ecstasy, but her “flight” is not beautiful. And far from ethereal.

Act II is so in-your-face that it has taken some post show reflection to appreciate how smart it is. Holzinger has gathered an array of references that in the hands of another scholar, might end up as a thesis dissertation. Holzinger instead chooses to toss them into the air to rain down on us with their full metaphorical weight. At the end of “Tanz,” I felt like I’d been through a war. Unlike a viewing of “Giselle,” where I’ve cheered on the Willies from the distance of a plush velvet auditorium seat, this time I joined them in their vengeful pas de bourrée.

Karen Hildebrand

Karen Hildebrand is former editorial director for Dance Magazine and served as editor in chief for Dance Teacher for a decade. An advocate for dance education, she was honored with the Dance Teacher Award in 2020. She follows in the tradition of dance writers who are also poets (Edwin Denby, Jack Anderson), with poetry published in many literary journals and in her book, Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Brooklyn.

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