FLORENTINA HOLZINGER
b. 1986, AustriaFlorentina Holzinger is an Austrian choreographer and performance artist whose large-scale ensemble pieces fuse ballet, stunt work, opera and visual art. She has developed a distinct feminist performance language that moves fluidly between contemporary dance, theatre and site-specific interventions in public space. Selected to represent Austria at the 61st Venice Biennale with SEAWORLD VENICE, she is also represented as a visual artist by Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.
Early Life and Education
Florentina Holzinger was born in Vienna, Austria, on 8 January 1986 and grew up in a Catholic family before formally leaving the Church as a young adult. After beginning studies in architecture, she shifted to choreography and trained at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) at the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, a programme known for experimental contemporary dance.
From the early 2010s Holzinger has lived and worked between Vienna and Amsterdam, maintaining close collaborations with theatres and festivals in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. She has held long-term associations with institutions such as Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin, where she became an associate artist in 2021.
Artworks and Style
Florentina Holzinger artworks combine classical ballet vocabulary, stunt choreography, and body art to expose how spectacle, discipline and violence structure contemporary performance. Her productions typically feature all-female or women-led casts who undergo demanding physical training, creating what she has described as action ballets that sit between high culture and popular entertainment. From 2020 onward she has extended this practice into Études in public space and, from 2026, into visual art contexts through her representation by Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.
Holzinger’s practice has been situated within a broader Austrian and European history of radical body art. Often linked to the legacy of Viennese Actionism and artists such as Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus, and Otto Muehl, her work similarly uses blood, ritualised violence, and taboo-breaking imagery to confront spectators with their own thresholds of endurance and moral judgment, while drawing on feminist performance and figures like VALIE EXPORT to foreground female agency within these extreme stagings.
Early works and Developments, 2010s
Holzinger’s diploma solo Silk, presented at ImPulsTanz in Vienna after her graduation from SNDO, was awarded the Prix Jardin d’Europe in 2012 and foregrounded the hyper-trained female body as both instrument and spectacle. Earlier support included a European danceWEB grant in 2008 and an ImPulsTanz scholarship in 2011, which helped establish her within the European contemporary performance scene.
Working with Dutch collaborator Vincent Riebeek, Holzinger created the trilogy Kein Applaus für Scheiße (2011–12), Spirit (2012), and Wellness (2013), touring widely across European theatres and festivals. These productions mixed pop music, trash aesthetics, melodrama, and explicit physicality, setting the tone for her later fusion of spectacle, humour, and critical engagement with gendered performance.
Mature practice and Key series, 2015–2021
From the mid-2010s Holzinger shifted towards large-scale ensemble works that revisit canonical ballet and modernist theatre from a feminist perspective. In Apollon she reworked George Balanchine’s Apollon musagète as a stunt-driven performance where female performers assume control of classical narratives and the risks of virtuosity.
TANZ (2019), inspired by the Romantic ballet La Sylphide, situates performers in a brutal training studio where ageing bodies, acrobatics, and extreme endurance tests are staged against a backdrop of live piano and motorcycle stunts. The production became her most widely toured work and received the NESTROY Prize for Best Director and Theatre of the Year from Theater heute, consolidating her status in European contemporary theatre. Étude for an Emergency (2020) at Münchner Kammerspiele combined stuntwomen, opera singers, actors, and a car in a musical structure that examined female bodies and risk culture.
A Divine Comedy (2021), created for Ruhrtriennale, staged an underworld populated entirely by women, with aerial choreography and ritual sequences that drew on Dante while centring ageing and mortality. Performer Beatrice Trixie Cordua received the German Theatre Prize DER FAUST for her role, underlining how Holzinger’s productions create demanding yet acclaimed roles for older female performers.
Recent projects and ongoing themes, 2022–
Ophelia’s Got Talent (2022), produced for Volksbühne Berlin, reimagines Shakespeare’s Ophelia as a powerful aquatic figure in a drag-inflected talent show using large water tanks, diving acts, and pop-cultural references. The work was named Production of the Year by Theater heute, received a German Theatre Prize DER FAUST for Beatrice Trixie Cordua in 2023, and was selected for the Berliner Theatertreffen, underscoring its impact within European theatre.
SANCTA (Sancta Susanna), Holzinger’s first opera production, premiered in 2024 at Mecklenburg State Theatre in collaboration with Stuttgart State Opera and extended her interest in religious iconography, ecstatic female bodies, and ritualised violence. The staging attracted wide attention for its unsimulated physical acts, live piercing, and use of blood, and was later included in Theatertreffen selections. In 2025 she created A Year Without Summer, a large-scale theatre work that continued her exploration of ensemble training, myth, and apocalyptic scenarios, and formed part of the programme at Kunsthaus Bregenz.
Holzinger’s ongoing Études, an evolving series of site-specific performances in public space since 2020, have been presented with institutions including Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, Bergen Kunsthall, Kunsthalle Wien, and Wiener Festwochen. These works test how choreographed bodies move through urban and institutional environments, often involving vehicles, water, or aerial structures and engaging passers-by alongside theatre audiences.
SEAWORLD VENICE, presented at the Austrian Pavilion for the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026, extends the Études into the lagoon through performances on water, land and in the air, confronting tourism, waste and the intertwined precarity of bodies and ecosystems.
Awards and honours of Florentina Holzinger
- 2025, Selection for Berliner Theatertreffen for A Year Without Summer, Germany.
- 2024, Selection for Berliner Theatertreffen for SANCTA (Sancta Susanna), Germany.
- 2023, German Theatre Prize DER FAUST (for Beatrice Trixie Cordua’s performance in Ophelia’s Got Talent).
- 2022, Production of the Year, Theater heute, for Ophelia’s Got Talent.
- 2021, German Theatre Prize DER FAUST (for Beatrice Trixie Cordua’s performance in A Divine Comedy).
- 2020, NESTROY Prize (Best Director) for TANZ, Vienna, Austria.
- 2020, Performance of the Year, Theater heute, for TANZ.
- 2012, Prix Jardin d’Europe, ImPulsTanz Festival, Vienna, for Silk.
- 2011, ImPulsTanz scholarship, Vienna.
- 2008, European danceWEB grant.
Exhibitions of Florentina Holzinger
Florentina Holzinger’s works are presented widely in theatres and festivals across Europe and increasingly within contemporary art institutions and biennials. Her projects often evolve across formats, with theatre productions, Études in public space, and institutional presentations forming connected bodies of work.
Select exhibitions, projects and performances
- 2026, SEAWORLD VENICE, Austrian Pavilion, 61st Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.
- 2025, A Year Without Summer, theatre project within the programme of Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria.
- 2024, SANCTA (Sancta Susanna), Mecklenburg State Theatre and Stuttgart State Opera, Germany.
- 2022, Ophelia’s Got Talent, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, Germany.
- 2021, A Divine Comedy, Ruhrtriennale, Ruhr region, Germany.
- 2020, Étude for an Emergency, Münchner Kammerspiele, Munich, Germany.
- 2019, TANZ, various European theatres including venues in Vienna, Berlin, and Helsinki.
- 2012, Silk, ImPulsTanz Festival, Vienna, Austria.
Select group exhibitions
- 2024, Harbour Étude as part of live programme at Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway.
- 2022–2024, Études presented with Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, Germany.
- 2021–2024, Presentations of TANZ, A Divine Comedy, Ophelia’s Got Talent, and SANCTA at Berliner Festspiele’s Theatertreffen, Berlin, Germany.
- 2020–ongoing, Études with Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria, and Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria.
- 2011–2013, Kein Applaus für Scheiße, Spirit, Wellness in festival and theatre programmes including ImPulsTanz (Vienna) and Sophiensaele (Berlin).
Florentina Holzinger FAQs
Who is Florentina Holzinger?
Florentina Holzinger is an Austrian contemporary artist, choreographer, and performance-maker born in Vienna in 1986, known for extreme ensemble works that combine ballet technique, stunts, and feminist body politics. She lives and works between Vienna and Amsterdam, with strong ties to institutions in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands.
What type of art does Florentina Holzinger make?
Florentina Holzinger makes large-scale performance artworks and operas that use nudity, high-risk stunts, live music, and references to classical ballet and religion to test how female bodies are trained, displayed, and controlled in contemporary culture. Her practice spans theatre stages, public space Études, and biennial exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale.
Where does Florentina Holzinger live and work?
Florentina Holzinger lives and works between Vienna, Austria, and Amsterdam, Netherlands, while producing many of her major projects with theatres and festivals in Berlin, Munich, and other European cities. She has been an associate artist at Volksbühne Berlin since 2021, anchoring much of her work in the German theatre landscape.
What is Florentina Holzinger best known for?
Florentina Holzinger is best known for the productions TANZ, A Divine Comedy, Ophelia’s Got Talent, SANCTA, and A Year Without Summer, which recast ballet and opera as extreme spectacles centred on female performers and ageing bodies. TANZ in particular has toured widely and garnered major awards, establishing her reputation in contemporary performance.
Which awards has Florentina Holzinger received?
Florentina Holzinger has received the Prix Jardin d’Europe for Silk, the NESTROY Prize and Theater heute Performance of the Year for TANZ, and multiple German Theatre Prize DER FAUST distinctions associated with A Divine Comedy and Ophelia’s Got Talent. Her productions have also been repeatedly selected for the Berliner Theatertreffen, underlining their influence in German-language theatre.
Where can I see work by Florentina Holzinger?
Work by Florentina Holzinger can be seen at major European theatres, opera houses, and festivals, including Volksbühne Berlin, Münchner Kammerspiele, Ruhrtriennale, and ImPulsTanz in Vienna. From May to November 2026, audiences can experience SEAWORLD VENICE at the Austrian Pavilion of the 61st Venice Biennale, with extended Études across the lagoon.
Who represents Florentina Holzinger as an artist?
Florentina Holzinger is represented as a visual artist by Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, which announced her representation in 2026 and supports her Austrian Pavilion project SEAWORLD VENICE at the Venice Biennale. Her performance works continue to be produced with a network of theatres and festivals throughout Europe, including Volksbühne Berlin and Bergen Kunsthall.
What themes does Florentina Holzinger explore in her practice?
Florentina Holzinger explores themes of female representation, discipline, vulnerability, ageing, violence, religion, and spectacle, using trained bodies and extreme acts to question the expectations placed on women in ballet, opera, and mass entertainment. Water, training studios, and underworld settings recur across her artworks as spaces for transformation, collective endurance, and critique.
Ocula | 2026
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