Beatrice Cordua, Trixie (1943-2025), died last year. A legendary German ballerina, dancer, choreographer, stage and film actress, and performer, she made her professional ballet debut at the age of sixteen. In her youth, she performed in ballet productions by many distinguished choreographers, often as a soloist. She danced in productions by John Neumaier, among others.
Her role as the Chosen One/Victim in “The Rite of Spring,” choreographed by Neumaier and performed in Frankfurt in 1972, became a landmark performance. She was the first dancer to dance it nude. This artistic and choreographic gesture, which caused a scandal and outrage among Frankfurt audiences at the time, has been frequently repeated in subsequent performances of this ballet ever since. It seems that this role set the artistic direction for the rest of her life, leading her towards the avant-garde, experimentation, transgression, and body art. Her choreographic experiments were met with curiosity and approval as often as with misunderstanding and criticism.
She considered the body to be the artist-dancer’s tool, just as the violin is the violinist’s tool. Although, of course, as she joked, dancers and performers, including herself, treat their instruments much worse than violinists.
Trixie’s death was announced by Florentina Holzinger, with whom she had become linked in the final years of her life. The two women, as Holzinger wrote in her memoir, met a decade ago in Berlin at a panel dedicated to Anita Berber. It is significant and not coincidental that these two courageous, conscious, and uncompromising theater artists met and united under the aegis of another outstanding dancer-provocateur, an icon of qualitative controversy, a tireless advocate for truth in life and theater, and a patron of rebellious art.
In Florentina’s performances, the history of Beatrice’s artistic endeavors came full circle. Holzinger’s ecstatic, extreme, physical and physiological performances, performed in the nude, found their perfect medium in Trixie. I saw two of Holzinger’s performances with her: “Tanz” in Warsaw and “Divine Comedy” in Berlin. The former, in particular, seemed dedicated and dedicated to Trixie, a tribute to her talent, courage, charisma, and personality. In Holzinger’s last performance, “A Year Without Summer,” Cordua spoke openly on stage about the cancer that was consuming her, blowing her partners and the audience a farewell kiss.
The documentary “Trixie,” directed by Bastien Genoux (2020), shot several years before the artist’s death, is a sensitive portrait of Trixie, an extraordinary woman who recounts her experiences as a dancer and choreographer. Her personal experiences reveal a life filled with fascination with the great dance icons she worked with and admired. With both her voice and her body, she recounts her incredible career, touching on the intimate issue of her relationship with the aging body. The Katowice screening of “Trixie” is the film’s Polish premiere.
Directed by: Bastien Genoux
Written by: Bastien Genoux, Nicole Seiler
Starring: Beatrice Cordua
Music by: Stepane Vecchione
Production: Detours Film
Location: Switzerland
Premiere: October 2020
Duration: 80 minutes
+16
There is nudity in the film.
Tickets for the movie HERE.
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