“He who controls the fool’s gold, controls the fools.” - Orrin Woodward 

Now that the world is run by a bunch of fools, let us turn their tools into complete foolery! In their new performance, the SUB.LAB.PRO Ensemble Program and invited choreographer Boglárka Börcsök stage the dance of the fallible, the grotesque, the lunatic full of artifice. Fool's Gold is a playful study of the medieval and early modern fool, but it also mirrors how ‘out of joint’ our world is today.

We summon you, you fearless medieval shadows, you fools, jesters, idiots! Escape from the margins of the ancient manuscripts, from the frozen grimaces of Renaissance paintings, and let the people of today rejoice in your wise and childlike freedom, for it is all an illusion in the making.

Boglárka Börcsök is a Hungarian dancer and choreographer who lives and works in Berlin. She first appeared on stage at the age of 5 in the cultural house of her village in Kiszombor, near the Romanian border, and continues to perform and present her work on stages and in museums across Europe. Last year, Trafó showed her highly successful performance-installation Figuring Age, which was selected for Aerowaves23 and tells the story of the early 20th century modern dance movement in Hungary through three women who Boglárka embodies with uncanny detail on stage. Co-created with Andreas Bolm, The Art of Movement tells the life stories of these women through the medium of film, which they also presented internationally, among others at the Budapest International Documentary Film Festival.

SUB.LAB.PRO is a creative platform for contemporary dancers to expand their technical and creative capabilities through choreographic creations. The program is designed to foster a realistic appreciation of a professional company-like environment by offering a complete toolkit to sustain and nourish the dancers at the start of their career paths. During the training, 4 different choreographers create full-evening performances for the dancers, and the company presents the finished work on the Trafó’s main stage. Fool’s Gold is the fourth and final show of the 2024/2025 Ensemble.