Habitat / Halle E is Doris Uhlich’s biggest choreography in open space to date. The naked bodies of 120 people flick, vibrate and slap against each other to electronic sounds and abstract techno tracks. The performers celebrate their unity in diversity. As individuals and as a crowd at the same time they conquer the space in a choreography that is captivating, highly energetic and, at times, collectively reposing. Hall E is transformed into a “habitat” full of unexpected life forms – the audience moves about freely in the available space. Habitat transcends conventional ideas of the body, of dance and of nakedness in a subversive manner. Habitat is a utopia. A shameless but also a free-of-shame hymn to a naked body beyond cultural inscriptions and conventional ideals of beauty. The body is not devalued to the level of a fetish, an object; and carnality is neither metaphorically nor poetically ideologised but understood in a material sense and is therefore presented in all its mass and weight yet also in its fragility.

Doris Uhlich has developed her own projects since 2006. The choreographer’s work frequently focuses on examining everyday gestures but also artificial ones, such as the strict code of movement of classical ballet in SPITZE (2008) and Come Back (2012). All her performances are investigations into beauty ideals and standards of body image, as in her piece mehr als genug (2009). Since her performance more than naked (2013), Doris Uhlich has also been working on the depiction of nudity free from ideology and provocation.

Music – particularly electronic dance music, from new wave to techno – plays an important part in her explorations. With Habitat, she presented a naked ensemble rave-dancing at the Order of Friars Minor Conventual church in Krems and in front of the Vienna Secession. Doris Uhlich and dancer Michael Turinsky won the Nestroy Special Award “for inclusion on an equal footing” for the performance Ravemachine (2016). The production Every Body Electric, which premiered at Tanzquartier Wien in 2018, was this year invited to the Venice Dance Biennale and to the Bienal Sesc de Dança in São Paulo among others.