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9 September 2026

Flora Miranda's Costumes Bring Science and Fashion to the New Year's Concert

Choreographer Andrey Kaydanovskiy, director Michael Beyer and the production team meet with Vienna State Ballet dancers wearing Flora Miranda costumes.
Quick Read

• Flora Miranda makes her debut as costume designer for the ORF New Year's Concert Ballet 2027.
• The Salzburg-born designer brings together fashion, art, digital technology and scientific research — a combination reflected in the two new ballet sequences.
• For the first time, the ORF production combines ballet with professional artistic swimming, moving between land, water and underwater.
• The sequences will be shown on 1 January 2027 during the ORF broadcast, starting at 11:15 a.m. on ORF 2 and ORF ON.

From experimental fashion to the New Year's Concert

Flora Miranda's path to the New Year's Concert is rooted in experimental fashion rather than traditional costume design. In 2016, she received Austria's Outstanding Artist Award for Experimental Fashion Design, a federal cultural award created by the Austrian Federal Chancellery to recognise innovative positions in contemporary fashion. It was only one step in an increasingly international career. Miranda's biography lists, among others, the Justus Brinckmann Prize in Germany, the Good Design Award in Chicago, the Rado Starprize and the Mercur Innovation Award in Austria, as well as the Henry van de Velde Award in Belgium. Her exhibition history ranges from London's Somerset House and Rotterdam's Boijmans Museum to the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, MAD Brussels, Mexico's Museo de Arte Zapopan and Shanghai's Hai Museum of Art.

Where fashion meets algorithms

Technology is not an accessory to Miranda's work but one of its recurring subjects. Her practice combines fashion with generative design, digital media and artificial intelligence. She worked for Iris van Herpen early in her career before developing her own label and a practice spanning fashion, visual art, installations and stage costumes. Her 2023 exhibition at the MAK's Geymüllerschlössel in Vienna offered a concise introduction to this approach. The show presented her book I Am Digital and works examining identity in the digital age. Among the projects discussed was LaLaLand, in which an algorithm was trained using 3D scans to investigate how artificial intelligence might participate in the creative process.

Digital thinking, scientific spaces

In Miranda's work, the digital does not stand apart from the physical world. Algorithms, data and new technologies repeatedly meet questions of the body, perception, materials and, increasingly, natural and scientific systems. Her work Sidereal, for example, drew on research into quantum physics, while her current The Logician explicitly places technology and nature in dialogue. That makes her a particularly fitting choice for a production whose new ballet narratives move into scientific territory. At the Austrian Academy of Sciences, eight dancers become researchers searching for a discovery in the institution's historic library and rooms. Their transformation is reflected in Miranda's unisex costumes.

From the laboratory to the swimming pool

The second sequence shifts from research to water. In Vienna's Amalienbad, four dancers from the Vienna State Ballet perform alongside the Alexandri sisters — Anna-Maria, Eirini-Marina and Vasiliki — professional artistic swimmers. For the first time in the history of the ORF New Year's Concert Ballet, the choreography takes place on land, in the water and underwater. Miranda's costumes partly made from silicone give the swimmers and dancers a futuristic appearance while echoing the Art Nouveau geometry of the Amalienbad's tiles. The result links costume, architecture and movement rather than treating clothing simply as decoration.

The two sequences were choreographed by former Vienna State Ballet dancer Andrey Kaydanovskiy and filmed by ORF director Michael Beyer, who is directing the New Year's Concert Ballet for the 14th time. The ORF has already released a first look at the production. The Schatz-Walzer and Sofien-Quadrille, both by Johann Strauss II, will form the musical framework. The ballet sequences will be shown during the New Year's Concert broadcast on 1 January 2027 from 11:15 a.m. on ORF 2 and ORF ON. The concert will be conducted for the first time by Tugan Sokhiev. The New Year's Concert is one of Austria's most successful television exports: it is broadcast to more than 150 countries via TV and streaming services, reaching around 50 million viewers worldwide.


Image: Behind the scenes at the filming of the 2027 ORF New Year's Concert Ballet. Choreographer Andrey Kaydanovskiy and director Michael Beyer teamed up with the Vienna State Ballet, whose dancers wore costumes by Flora Miranda. © ORF/Klaus Titzer