More than 50 dance professionals from Hungary, as well as Croatia, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Russia, Lithuania and Poland participated at the conference. Hungary was represented by Petra Péter and Iván Angelusz.
Perhaps because of the limited time, most of the speakers at the conference failed to directly address the question that was the conference?s title, focusing rather on the place of contemporary dance in their own countries. However, Iván Angelusz, who heads the Hungarian Dance Academy, did attempt an answer in his closing remarks.
Every period has its great artists and these people think they have brought choreography to a point from which it can progress no further, Angelusz said. Exactly because of this, dance cannot die ? the tools of expression change from age to age, he explained.
As a school director, Angelusz said he sought to answer the question of how to instruct the next generation of dancers and choreographers and what to pass on to them, be it folk dance, classical ballet or even the traditions of tai chi. The work of important 20th century artists such as José Limón, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham has become as much as a part of dance curriculum as classical ballet, he noted. For this reason, the goal of the Hungarian Dance Academy is to give its students a kind of open knowledge, but one that integrates traditions too, he said.
Iztok Kovacs of the Slovenian Association of Contemporary Dance Institutions, acknowledged the broad support for dance by the Slovenian state, resulting in the establishment of institutions and associations as well as an ?exceptionally large production of performances?, but said more must be done.
?The Slovene contemporary dance scene doesn?t want to lag behind the development of European and worldwide performing arts practices, and thus we believe that it requires some necessary, radical structural changes.?
Júlia Hoczyk spoke about the slow development of Polish contemporary dance and influences from the West.
Ivana Ivkovic from Croatia spoke about three Croatian and Slovenian choreographers whose work involves ?stepping and walking, stillness and silence, jumping and falling?.
?If we stop the body in passing and take a step forward, towards the idea of dance as an act that includes periods without movement, cracks or ?negative spaces? of dance, we open up our minds to the potential for a structural use of the void and stillness in contemporary choreography,? Ivkovic said.
Author: Virág Vida / Photo: Trafó
