At last years Summer Festival Florentina Holzinger stunned the audience with the hell ride A DIVINE COMEDY. Now she returns with OPHELIA’S GOT TALENT, which premiered at Volksbühne, sold out permanently for months in advance, was invited to Theatertreffen and is dedicated to the wet element. With Houdini tricks, ballet-historical refer-ences from John Neumeier’s “Little Mermaid” to Frederick Ashton’s “Ondine” and graceful stunts, Holzinger and her 21-member crew tell of water creatures and their cultural history. This maximalist water spectacle takes apart art genres just as much as male fantasies. Based on Shakespeare’s Ophelia, the performers narrate and overwrite their traumas through the selfdetermined, controlled flirtation with mortal danger. Whereby Ophelia’s walk into the water, according to the jury of the Berliner Theatertreffen, “is reinterpreted as an empowerment strategy: from survival mode to a mad spectacle.”
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