The two choreographers have split up the rehearsal time. Duda has the morning slot and Juronics the afternoon one. But, even though Duda's rehearsal wound up around two o'clock in the afternoon, I find her here in the theatre at five o'clock. The rehearsal space, otherwise sparsely furnished, contains ten bright red chairs - props for The Green Salon.
Last summer, Duda was the dance director for a production of the operetta Countess Maritza during the Szeged Open-Air Festival. The Green Salon would appear to be a 180-degree turn from that production, but appearances are deceptive.
"I have two professions: choreographing operettas and musicals is just a much a part of my life as alternative arts," says Duda. "I don't pigeon-hole myself, I don't think about terms of artistic categories, but in movement and in body."
The Green Salon shows the various rituals of the formation and separation of couples. Fear, repression and deception are among the words mentioned in the blurb for the performance. But Duda insists this isn't entirely accurate.
"The content has been refined in the course of rehearsals....a toned down, more emphatic and sensitive version has been created, one that fills, rather than drains, the audience," Duda says.
We aren't alone in the rehearsal space. Several dancers are already preparing for the evening rehearsal and more are arriving. In addition to the nine performers in Nothing and Never and the director Juronics are myself and four photographers trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.
Juronics works with a pair of dancers at the start as the others warm up. Then the rehearsal begins in earnest.
Juronics says some members who have been with the troupe longer performed the piece in 2003, but only a few times and always in Budapest.
"We didn't perform it in Szeged, but I wanted to show it here too....I wanted to explore it, to dig from the depths that which moves people," he says.
Author: Éva Ibos / Photos: Béla Dusha
