Ophelia showed talent – Newspaper Kommersant No. 1 (7446) dated 01/09/2023

Florentina Holzinger’s Ophelia’s Got Talent, a co-production of the Volksbühne and festivals in Holland, Austria and Switzerland, is one of Berlin’s biggest hits. Each show gathers at the theater such crowds of sufferers as there were in the best years of the leadership of Frank Castorf. About what talents Ophelia discovered and why all this is needed, tells Alla Shenderova.

“I see the Volksbühne… I’m about to jump off… Let’s check if we have talent” — a pirate girl in a cocked hat and with a gold fixation on her front tooth appears on the screens on the sides of the stage. This is Annina Makhaz, and she will become the protagonist of the show, which could be called “Come on, girls,” if the Viennese choreographer and performer Florentina Holzinger knew about this Soviet program.

A graduate of the Amsterdam School of Art, 36-year-old Venka Holzinger seems to have absorbed the spirit of Viennese actionism: she begins any work with reflections on “what to do to impress everyone.” In 2012, her solo dance performance “Silk”, shown at the “Impulsants” festival, won the Jardin d’Europe prize. In 2021, René Pollesh, called to return life to the Volksbühne, which was almost destroyed by officials, called her to the theater. Ophelia is her third work on this stage. And she’s really amazing.

There is a lot of nudity in the performance – all 14 participants are partially or completely naked. But here there is no uniform, no binding: Annina Makhaz wears a cocked hat and a white shirt, under which there are no pants – only boots. Fantastically slender Melody Alia is wearing only tall boots – the kind Venetians wear during floods. Some of the girls are topless, but in trousers. The most fearless one, the contestant in a wheelchair, strips herself in the course of the action, jumps off her chair and dances an elegant striptease around an ordinary plunger, like around a pole. In general, each is dressed or undressed in its own way, and each in its own way gets rid of the stigmas that have been imposed on the female body for centuries.

On an almost empty stage, a team of four older ladies judge the young members who showcase their different talents. Phoebe, a sword swallower, performs a kind of “gastroscopy” with the study of her “inner ocean” (a camera held to her stomach broadcasts the presence of silver fish in it). During the performance, the dashing pirate Ophelia turns out to be too empathic and turns away – like a good half of the audience, but the operation is successful. More difficult with the number “Harry Houdini” – it is performed by Nettie Nyuganen, diving into an aquarium standing on the proscenium in shackles. The electronic clock counts down the seconds, the ladies on the stage and the audience in the hall are fascinated by how Nettie, wriggling, frees herself from the chains. In the last seconds, something goes wrong, Nettie has a cramp, one of the girls dives into the aquarium and helps her out. Here, for the first and only time, men enter the scene – fitters. After making sure that the girl is out of danger, they tactfully leave. Those who watch the performance not for the first time, argue that all this is intended. It’s about the value of human life: no deadly number is worth it, that’s what Holzinger says, dramatically changing the format of the performance. The sailor dance that the whole crew dances during the reshuffle becomes one of the highlights. At the end of it, the women fall on top of each other in exhaustion, and the audience screams with delight.

At the same time, the audience of “Ophelia” is not only women. There are a lot of couples in the hall. Some even come with children, despite the “18+” on the poster. At some point, Ophelia will call the children (girls) to the stage as well – and with a screech they occupy the aquarium in the back of the stage, dressed up in masks and mermaid tails.

After all, the action, as follows from the program, takes place “in the twilight of the “age of Aquarius”, when humanity, having played enough in technology, recalls humanitarian problems and collective responsibility.” The heirs and friends of Ophelia “soar above the depths and abysses, remembering their ancestors: Leda, Meluzina, Ondine, nymphs, nereids and sirens …”. However, they remember not only about them, but also about many other things, about which the theater preferred to remain silent for centuries.

A pink sunrise over azure water is replaced by a purple and purple storm (the exquisite light in the performance is the work of Anne Miussen), but the storm wind cannot bend the participants: they remain a single team. They fight against the elements, swim and soar: at the climax, a yellow helicopter appears above the stage, and the participants cling to it, uttering orgastic moans and demonstrating the wonders of acrobatics.

This performance, like Holzinger’s previous works, is compared by many with the sensational “Mount Olympus” by Jan Fabre (see “Kommersant” dated July 8, 2015). But Fabre, who received a suspended sentence last year on charges of harassment and violation of boundaries (based on a class action lawsuit by his former dancers and dancers), is out of fashion today.

Maybe in 20 years we will learn something similar about Florentine Holzinger. But today, her show exudes such drive and such incredible freedom that you don’t even want to think about it. If we compare this slightly drawn-out action with something (after the most spectacular number with the “splashing down” of the helicopter, three more finals follow, each of which can grow into a performance), then with the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries. Mountains of books have been written about them, but in fact almost nothing is known. In addition, only women could participate in them and their passions knew no bounds. “Ophelia” is clearly from the same series.