Dark Mofo has announced its first major production for the 2023 edition of Hobart’s annual winter festival, the 10th and final festival to be helmed by Leigh Carmichael, who steps out of the role after this year’s festival concludes.

Likely to be one the festival’s tentpole events, the Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger’s A Divine Comedy will be presented as an Australian exclusive. Featuring nude performers, all manner of bodily fluids, slasher movie references and slapstick, it is a work calculated to reinforce Dark Mofo’s reputation as a festival dedicated to presenting art at its most confrontational.

A Divine Comedy. Photo supplied.

Holzinger’s theatre addresses gender relations and the representation of women’s bodies in art and media. Blending elements of contemporary dance, circus sideshow, performance art and extreme athleticism, her work is violently transgressive. In her 2017 work Apollon, performers bled and defecated onstage. The Dante-inspired A Divine Comedy, which premiered in Germany’s Ruhrtriennale in 2021, “combines onstage hypnosis, athletic performances, slapstick routines, action painting and pornographic situations to no apparent...