Fri 8.5.2026 // 19.30
Image: Portyannikovy S&I
Fri 8.5.2026// 19.30
Work-in-progress showing
Bräuhausgasse 40, 1050 Wien // pay as you wish/can // drinks & food
Concept & dance: Bianca Figl and Sasha Portyannikova
Living and working in Austria, Bianca Figl and Sasha Portyannikova explore the exoticized legacies that shape their artistic backgrounds: Indonesian dance(s) and the Ballets Russes. Through a teaching-learning exchange centered on the peacock and swan dances, they examine canon, cliché, and nation-building, as the choreographic materials play a significant role in the cultural heritage and identity of Indonesia and Russia. Figl and Portyannikova reflect on dance as cultural diplomacy, thereby reclaiming agency over their embodied heritage and critically engaging with identity, exoticization, and the experience of encountering unfamiliar corporeal practices.
Bianca Figl (AT/ID) combines research and artistic practice in collaborative projects situated at the intersections of dance, archives, education, and decolonial inquiry. Her artistic work weaves Indonesian dance forms with contemporary questions of memory, embodied knowledge, and colonial histories, critically engaging with the body as an active and dynamic archive. From 2012 to 2020, she worked at the Weltmuseum Wien during its major reconstruction phase, contributing to programme development, outreach, and exhibition-making, with a particular emphasis on participatory curatorial strategies. She completed a PhD in Arts Practice Research at the University of Limerick (Ireland), where her research investigated alternative approaches to knowledge production and the politics of representation in embodied archives. Figl lectures at the University of Vienna in museum and education studies and serves as a visiting researcher and guest lecturer at the Institute of the Arts (ISI) Surakarta, Indonesia.
Sasha Portyannikova (RU/AT) is a white able-bodied dance artist born in the Soviet Union, raised in Moscow, living and working in Berlin and New York, currently based in Vienna. She graduated from the Vaganova Ballet Academy (MA, 2013), co-founded the dance cooperative Isadorino Gore with Dasha Plokhova in 2012, became a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in 2018, and has been curating Touching Margins with Nitsan Margaliot and Anna Chwialkowska since 2020. As a dance artist, Sasha Portyannikova has worked across Europe, and the USA. She has collaborated with organizations such as Amnesty International, ZKM, ITI Berlin, SDVIG, Hellerau, and Garage MCA, where she created an opening for the Louise Bourgeois exhibition. Sasha authored the Manual for the Practical Use of a Dance Archive in collaboration with Dasha Plokhova. Her research and curatorial interests center on exploring diverse dance histories and the complex interplay of cultures and politics. www.sashaportyannikova.com