Heathers is a live performance based on choreographed moments, which are extracted from the popular 1977 horror movie Suspiria by Dario Argento. It is also a site-specific intervention in the rehearsal rooms of the Ballet School of the State Opera in Vienna – another parallel to Suspiria which also set in a Ballet School. We dismantled the ballet bars in the room and re-arranged them as sculptural lighting objects and therefore, disappropriate them from their former function as a training tool. Similar to a horror movie trailer, the actual climate of suspense is never reached in the live performance. The sequence stops and goes over into another scene. The original special effects such as appliances coming to life and working on their own, lose their intended scary results as they appear out of context.

The character of Heather, which is based on the corresponding 1988 movie Heathers by Michael Lehman, is embodied by all three performers who are wearing the same clothes and performing the same choreography. Between sequences all three Heathers interacted with each other – for example one adjusted the outfit or the hairstyle of another. We picked on these quiet and intimate gestures as a reference to the over-stylized sexual connotations of horror movie actresses in general.
Heathers is a continuation of a collaboration with Nora Jacobs and Nicole Sabella and was created during a Turboresidency at the Impulstanzfestival in 2013 in Vienna.

PERFORMED AT:

Turboresidency 2013 – Doubleshowing, Impulstanzfestival, ballet school of Viennese State Opera, Vienna (AT), 2013

CREDITS:

Photography by Nina Herlitschka & Janine Maria Schneider