The Austrian choreographer talks about her formative collaboration with Trixie Cordua, the “naked ballerina” of John Neumeier’s 1972 version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring
This story is taken from the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of AnOther Magazine:
“The dancer Trixie Cordua studied under George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham and was famously known as the ‘naked ballerina’, but by her thirties she was considered ‘too old’ for ballet. She started teaching and had her own art practice, revelling in all that ballet had refused and sanitised – mess, blood, abjection. She was an artist whose choices contrasted with conventional family life. In its place she had many lives and I was there for the very last part.
“Trixie was a hustler. After we met at a panel discussion she invited me to dinner and said she wanted to perform for me. My work Tanz [2019] was built around her idea for a perverted ballet teacher who, quoting philosophy, teaches her students masturbation. Trixie found standing at the ballet barre erotic – she said you have to be in touch with your genitals while you dance. To encounter this relationship with sexuality from a woman in her eighties was mind-blowing. And there were so many funny episodes – once we took her to hospital because her blood pressure didn’t come back down after she had been masturbating. How do you explain that to a doctor? Despite 70 years’ experience, she still had nervous excitement before each show, saying, ‘I hope I’m not going to fuck it up.’ Of course she didn’t. She had such curiosity, openness, really dirty humour, and wisdom. Trixie said that in ballet you practise conditions for supernatural powers. What’s bad about that? Who wouldn’t want to learn to fly?”
The Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger produces work that confronts the customs of classical ballet, performance art, ritual, bodybuilding and even the wellness industry. She examines the many ways that bodies are choreographed, manipulated and leveraged, but also how – in sex, illness and death – they can revolt. Her work can shock: shows sell out instantly, audiences walk out, religious organisations declare blasphemy. Holzinger’s group – more chosen family than company – brings together bodies traditionally excluded from dance, whether by age or ability, to reveal alternative means of producing work. Recent productions include the visceral A Year Without Summer (2025), her first opera, Sancta (2024), and the transgressive “gigantic water spectacle” Ophelia’s Got Talent (2022). This spring she will represent Austria at the Venice Biennale. Holzinger’s collaboration with Beatrice “Trixie” Cordua – the scandalous “naked ballerina” of John Neumeier’s 1972 version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – was formative. Cordua joined Holzinger’s fold in her seventies, performing in three of her productions before her death last year.
This story features in the Spring/Summer 2026 issue, marking 25 years of AnOther Magazine, on sale now.
