The stage is shrouded in darkness as eerie moans, cackles and chirps pierce the air. The outline of a back gradually becomes visible. As the setting brightensmega swerte, that shape turns into a woman, Beatrice Cordua, an 83-year-old ballet veteran, seated with her back to the audience. She makes her way to her feet and holds her arms out in welcome.

“Today, I am going to teach you how to govern your bodies,” she says. “Girls, get the barres.”

The first act of “Tanz,” a work by the Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger, an audacious star of the European dance and performance scene, is structured like a ballet class, though fittingly in this darkly humorous work, it bristles with tension. Aside from a microphone pack strapped around her torso, Cordua is nude.

As the class progresses from pliés to tendus, Cordua urges the dancers to shed their layers. “I’m hot and I have nothing on,” Cordua says. “Take something off.”

They comply. Soon the stage is a sea of skin.

Opening at NYU Skirball on Feb. 14 for an all-too-brief two-night run, “Tanz” (2019) is a daring exploration of the aging body, the art of discipline and training, and the illusion of ephemerality in ballet. It also embraces terror — for every sylph, there is a witch. Created for an all-female cast of 11,pnxbet official ranging in age from 30 to over 80, “Tanz” digs into what it means to take flight, particularly in relation to 19th-century Romantic ballets like “La Sylphide” and “Giselle.”

Gradually, ballet class veers into ballet horror. Holzinger, 39, is influenced by circus and sideshow acts — she loves a good stunt — and throughout “Tanz,” high and low art share center stage. One scene involves body suspension, in which hooks pierce the skin of a performer’s upper back and are connected to cords that lift her into the air. As she dangles, her legs bend and curl in an aerial dance that makes you cringe in imagined pain. But with shock also comes a sense of awe.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

“In recent weeks, a conversation around whether to change how we allocate our Electoral College votes has returned to the forefront,” Mr. McDonnell said in a statement on Monday. “I respect the desire of some of my colleagues to have this discussion, and I have taken time to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change.”

Ms. Gray’s 14-year-old son, Colt, is being charged as an adult for murder in the deadliest school shooting in Georgia’s history. He is accused of bringing an AR-15-style rifle to Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., earlier this month, killing four — two students and two math teachers — and injuring at least nine.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.mega swerte