D | E
The Tanzpassage Eisenstadt presents a poetic “Pas de deux” (French: dance for two) of changing perspectives on ballet, dance, and movement in space.
Spring / Summer 2024

The champagne is still splashing
in Fanny Elssler’s shoes

An exhibition
by Thomas Weinberger
 
Thomas Weinberger
(*1970 in Steyr) lives and works in Vienna. Diesel new art award Austria / Draw 2007. Painting Diploma 2008 from Art University Linz. Lecturer since 2011 on materials in art at Art University Linz. 

Paint, Perfume and Champagne

Diane Shooman

Dancers and dances are as ephemeral as perfume. Some, however, leave lasting traces. Fanny Elssler (1810–1844) of Vienna and Eisenstadt was one of those ballerinas. She enchanted on stages all over the world as the Romni Esmeralda, or dancing an impassioned polka, or clicking the castanets in her legendary interpretation of the Spanish Cachucha. In Fanny's wake, balletmania even splashed across the Atlantic to the USA: the U.S. Senate postponed sessions to attend her performances, and drank champagne from her slippers.

Fanny's charm and energy still resonate in laudatory descriptions, artworks, and original stage costumes. For the Tanzpassage Eisenstadt, artist Thomas Weinberger's pearly portrait of Fanny shimmers forth from a fragment of antique wood, and toeshoe-like paint tubes pirouette with paintbrushes as her corps de ballet. Even Fanny's wear-lined dance shoes, sketched onto round wooden stages, still seem brimful of life.
 



 

 
 
 
Still lively, Tondo, 2024 | “The Artist's Dream Vision”, Showcase installation, 2024 | Cracovienne (Polish folk dance), Tondo, 2024
Foyer and Passageway
Photos: Thomas Weinberger
Passage motto, exhibition title and text: Diane Shooman
Thomas Weinberger
(*1970 in Steyr) lives and works in Vienna. Diesel new art award Austria / Draw 2007. Painting Diploma 2008 from Art University Linz. Lecturer since 2011 on materials in art at Art University Linz.