Announcement // Hungarian Contemporary Dance Festival

Article by Beatrix Joyce in Berlin // Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016

The third edition of the Hungarian Contemporary Dance Festival will take place at Dock 11 theatre, Eden studios and Povvera in December, presenting a total of nine performances and a series of workshops. The festival, organised by the Bakelit Multi Art Centre in Budapest, aims to extend the exposure of performance produced in Hungary and facilitate the expansion of an international collaboration network.

Berlin Art Link Discover Hungarian Contemporary Dance Festival

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The Symptoms: ‘Sea Lavender’, 2016 // Photo by Csaba MÇsztros

One of the highlights includes the presentation of four short performances by the Hungarian L1 Association. L1 is an alliance of independent dancers with the main focus of promoting contemporary dance and importing creative thinking and progressive art practices into Hungary. The evening will be comprised of both collaborative and solo projects, showcasing the diversity that L1 primarily stands for.

Furthermore, a selection of independent dance practitioners will perform a wide variety of works at Dock 11 theatre. Ferenc Fehér presents a combination of expressive, freestyle dance and martial arts in his piece ‘Hello Zombie!’. The piece ‘Your mother at my door’ by Timothy and the Things deals with the everyday reality of wasted time. The dance duo Radioballett presents their work ‘The Nature of Love’, which portrays the adventurous and augmentative dynamics of love, and on the same night The Symptoms present ‘Sea Lavender’. In this all-female duet, performer Emese Cuhorka and 90-year-old Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor Éva Fahidi, seek to collapse the boundary between two seemingly incompatible worlds.

Meanwhile at Povvera, guitarist Dávid Somló and choreographer Imre Vass present the collaborative work ‘It comes it goes’, exploring the transformative cooperation of music and movement, placed within the context of an interactive art exhibition.

Alongside the robust performance program, a series of workshops will be held at Eden studios. Professional dancers are invited to take part in full-day workshops exploring the movement of animals and the use of space, led by Ferenc Fehér, Márta Ladjánszki and Zsolt Varga. In addition, the Bakelit Team welcomes all to a networking event in which opportunities for different projects and collaborations with Hungarian art collectives will be discussed.