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The National Dance Theatre will organize the Budapest Dance Festival for the 26th time this spring, bringing leading international and domestic artists of contemporary dance to Budapest between April 26 and May 10.
Between April 26 and May 10, the 26th Budapest Dance Festival will feature international and domestic artists who define contemporary dance at the National Dance Theatre. Among others, the Serbian National Theatre, the London City Ballet and the world-famous Compagnie Hervé Koubi will perform, and the Inversedance - Zoltán Fodor Company, the FrenÁk Company, the Győri Ballet, the Gradient Contemporary Ballet Debrecen and the new production of the Nagyvárad Dance Ensemble will also be seen.
According to a statement sent to MTI by the National Dance Theatre, the festival organizer, the Budapest Dance Festival features artists and companies that define the international and domestic directions of contemporary dance.
The opening night will be a production by the Serbian National Theatre, in the first part of which Jacopo Godani's choreography combines classical ballet techniques with contemporary movement, while the second part will feature a new interpretation of Ravel's Bolero.
At the beginning of May, the renewed London City Ballet will perform, coming to Budapest with its evening entitled Momentum. One of the special features of the production is that a work by George Balanchine, once thought to be lost, will also be on display, alongside choreographies by Liam Scarlett, Florent Melac and Ashley Page.
Highlights: as the highlight of the international program and the closing production of the festival, the Compagnie Hervé Koubi, a French-born choreographer with Algerian roots, will arrive, presenting his performance What the Day Owes to the Night. Fourteen male dancers will take to the stage this evening, and Hervé Koubi, inspired by orientalist painting and Islamic architecture, will create poetic, visually powerful stage images of light, intertwining and the power of human relationships.
The announcement quotes Péter Ertl, director of the National Dance Theatre, who said: this year they want to create a psychedelic fairy tale world through Hungarian performances.
Inspiring Hungarian productions at the Budapest Dance Festival
The new production of Inversedance - Zoltán Fodor Company, Alma - The Dark Empire, draws inspiration from the works of Judit Berg. The inaugural dance theatre performance of the Győri Ballet, titled Death and the Daughter, directed by Krisztina Szöllősi, examines the issues of life and passing away in the atmosphere of Franz Schubert's music, and the special feature of the production is the appearance of influential András Levente Farkas.
The FrenÁk Company creates a special stage world called F_EvER based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. The performance invites the audience on a dreamlike, night journey, where faith in goodness and humanity is at the center. The Hungarian productions are concluded by a two-act evening by Gradient Contemporary Ballet Debrecen. The company is led by Edit Domoszlai, who returned to Hungary as a creator after an international dance career.
The festival program is also enriched by a Hungarian company from beyond the border: the physical theater performance titled Happiness Seekers by the Nagyvárad Dance Company was inspired by the drama of Milán Füst and the film Requiem for a Dream, and was a joint creation of the company's prose and dance departments.
Young artists are also given space: two evenings in the small-hall programs will present the new generation of contemporary choreography. The evenings feature works by Erika Vasas, Ádám Fejes, Dalma Wéninger, Clark Bonus Ortega and Yun Ju Huang, among others.
Audience meetings and discussions at the Budapest Dance Festival
A number of additional programs await those interested. World Dance Day has been celebrated on April 29 since 1983, on the birthday of one of the greatest figures of classical ballet, Jean Georges Noverre. The Hungarian Dance Artists Association, in cooperation with the National Dance Theatre, organizes a gala evening on this day, during which the association's professional awards, as well as the recognitions of the Imre Zoltán Foundation and the Ifj. Zoltán Nagy Foundation, will be presented.
The audience can also expect other special programs: the swing program of the Pepita Dance and Recreation Association, and the Test/Education professional project day, within which you can get acquainted with the borderlands of puppetry, dance and improvisation in a playful, direct way. The program includes a performance titled Dancing Film Frames by János Lakatos, which is based on the intersection of dance and film history, as well as an interactive dance knowledge performance titled 30 Shades of Dance, led by Péter Ertl.
Source: MTI.hu
Photo: Budapest Dance Festival
