A musical. A comedy. A Dettol-dabbed frolic through the rot.

In 2023, acclaimed Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger raised the barre at RISING with TANZ—a show that hoisted ballet onto meat hooks to get a closer look at discipline and the body. Now Europe’s hottest director is back to pick at the scab with a new epic about medical science, mortality and monsters.

We begin in 1816. Indonesia’s Mount Tambora has erupted and blacked out the sun. Crops are failing. Famine is widespread. Mary Shelley is at a lake house, dreaming up Frankenstein. From there, Florentina and her cast jump-scare us into the reality of now. A world of unchecked technological growth shaped by AI, robotics, and bioengineering. Powered by the pursuit of longevity and medical promises of rejuvenation despite the looming feeling of ‘end times’. Stitches are off. Survival becomes ritual. Despair dances with ecstasy as razzle-dazzle musical numbers get delivered, kicking into life, from a giant inflatable womb.