Between February and May 2012 Trafó will welcome legendary choreographers and dance companies in Budapest. It is high time we continued our 200% dance series in Trafó House of Contemporary Arts!

We created a 200% dance pass for the three performances in the series. The dance pass costs 6600 HUF for adults, and 5400 HUF for students. Details: http://www.trafo.hu/en-US/berletinformaciok



In our series called 200% dance, we invite to Budapest the performances of world-renowned, brilliant choreographers and companies – dance pieces dominated by pure movement and pure beauty, by excellent composition, streamlined scenography, the dynamics of movement, the atmosphere-creating power of music, the comprehensible, thought-through form.  

In the frame of 200% dance series in the past few years, the Hungarian audience had the chance to see pieces created by Akram Khan, Louise Lecavalier, Compagnie Marie Chouinard, Wayne McGregor and Random Dance, Russell Maliphant Company or Batsheva in Trafó… this year we are pleased to present you the Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite, the famous choreographer (and this time: composer!) Emanuel Gat, and the legendary Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.  

Kidd Pivot - Crystal Pite (CAN): Dark Matters
200% dance
17-18. February 8PM  

With dark matter beautifully embodied in the shadowy puppeteer, Dark Matters is a haunting portrait of the unknown, a performance that pulls itself apart in an attempt to discover what it’s made of.  

“Dark matters” is the terra incognita of our day. Comprising a large part of the observable universe, dark matter affects the speed, structure and evolution of galaxies, yet its nature remains a mystery. This potent, affecting darkness is paralleled in Crystal Pite’s creation, Dark Matters with the mysterious forces within the human body and soul. Emerging out of Pite’s curiosity and fascination with the unseen forces at work in mind and body, Dark Matters features six extraordinary dancers, and a stunning original score from long-time collaborator Owen Belton.  

Crystal Pite has collaborated with celebrated dance artists, theatre companies and filmmakers in Canada, Europe, and the United States. Since 2002 Crystal Pite has created and performed under the banner of her own company. Her work and her company have been recognized with numerous awards and commissions. Kidd Pivot tours extensively around the world with productions that include The Tempest Replica (2011), The You Show (2010), Dark Matters (2009), Lost Action (2006), Uncollected Work (2002) and Double Story (2004), created with Richard Siegal. Kidd Pivot is the recipient of the 2006 Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award.  

17TH FEBRUARY - POST SHOW DISCUSSION
The post-show talk is moderated by Eszter Gal choreographer, dance teacher.  


EMANUEL GAT DANCE (F): Brilliant Corners
200% dance
28-29. April 8PM  

Brilliant Corners is a choreographic playground for a group of ten dancers. It explores the ways in which structures emerge, and how a deep understanding of these processes allow an intense look into some of the most intriguing questions out there.  

„Brilliant Corners is the title of an album by Jazz musician Thelonious Monk released in 1957. Monk’s music appears in no way in the score of this piece, but many aspects of his music are very much present. I have always found in it endless inspiration for dance making, and although the piece contains no direct reference to this music, it shares with it a certain understanding regarding the process of transforming concrete artistic matter (sounds and musical composition / dancers, movement and choreography), into environments where both artists and audiences are offered a somewhat clearer glance at life.” (Emanuel Gat)  

The work explores the forces, both mechanical and human, which generate the choreographic substance. The ever evolving structures are a direct manifestation of these forces and as such, hold revealing qualities and possible insights. Within the simplicity and clarity of a well-determined square of light, unfolds an ever-changing choreographic organism. An explosion of simultaneous ideas, Brilliant Corners functions as a seismograph of choreographic activity, tracking its vanishing structures and multiple perspectives, exposing both the fragility of the choreographic moment and its burning relevancy. A flow of kinetic events with endless rhythmic and melodic layers, Brilliant Corners moves through time and space in elaborate counterpoint, built around an intimate confidence in the capacity of the choreographic process to invent structures, which hold fundamental truth.  


Rosas (B): Fase
200% dance
15-16. May 8:30PM  

"Astonishing… spare, clean and with a soft, stealthy virtuosity" (EVENING STANDARD)  

Choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, burst onto the cultural landscape in 1982 with Fase, a fascinating dance work in four parts (three duets and one solo) set to the music of American minimalist composer Steve Reich.  

De Keersmaeker applies Reich’s phase-shifting principle to her choreography. Just as Reich allows his tones to gradually shift in rhythm, the movement evolves and dancers slowly move in and out of unison and make tiny changes. Performing with perfect timing, the dancers appear almost mechanical and yet they create an entrancing effect that will leave you speechless. In a recent New York Times interview, Steve Reich says of seeing Fase for the first time: “My jaw dropped. Of all the choreography done to my music this was by far this best thing I’d seen.” In the first piece, the lighting adds to the sense of hallucination, as each dancer casts a double shadow on a backcloth: the shadows merge and separate, creating the illusion of more dancers on stage.  

What makes the performance really special in Budapest: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker herself performs this time alongside Tale Dolven.