Avant-Garde Dance Companies Take Over Abrons Arts Center with TANC/DANCE Series, Now thru 12/6

From Balassi Institute Director Gergely Romsics: "Central Europe has often found itself on the margins-and you do not become involved in contemporary dance to be mainstream, either. So, to my mind, Central Europe and its tradition of experimental dance and physical theater are a natural pair.

On the margins-the artistic periphery-is where creativity truly flourishes, and I think we can be proud of the great and often deeply philosophical and lyrical choreography at the heart of the contemporary Central European free dance scene.

I hope New York audiences will appreciate what we have to offer: artists who are masters of their craft, who are truly independent and question contemporary life and society with exceptional perseverance. I hold a deep conviction that Central European dance has something to tell everyone, has a question to raise in everyone's mind, and a secret to share with audiences anywhere in the world."

Radio Ballet: The Nature of Love From today, November 15 through December 6, 2014, the Balassi Institute/Hungarian Cultural Center of New York in collaboration with the Abrons Arts Center presents TÁNC/DANCE, a series of daring and graphic new performances by three Hungarian contemporary dance ensembles, shedding light on today's Central European avant-garde independent dance scene.

Central Europe was home to Rudolf Laban and has experienced an explosion of talent and innovation since the fall of communism. TÁNC/DANCE offers New York audiences a unique opportunity to experience the work of select choreographers and performers from this region who continue to redefine the concept of dance. Three companies rooted in experimentation and physical theater will present three breakthrough performances-all American premieres: Animalinside by Jaro Vinarsky (November 15-17); Dawn by Hodworks (November 22-23); and The Nature of Love by Radio Ballet (December 5-6).

The series opened October 21 with a discussion and screening moderated by New York dance authority Laurie Uprichard, focussing on the career of legendary dance troupe The Symptoms, who recently made their American debut as part of the Peak Performances series at Montclair State University.

General Admission tickets for the performances range from a "Suggested Admission" to $20 and are available for purchase online at www.abronsartscenter.org/performances or by calling Ovation Tix at (212) 352-3101. **Please Note: These works contain nudity, depictions of violence, and mature subject matter, and may not be appropriate for all audiences.

The Abrons Arts Center is the performing and visual arts program of Henry Street Settlement. The Abrons supports the presentation of innovative, multi-disciplinary work; cultivates artists in all stages of their creative development through educational programs, commissions, and residencies; and serves as an intersection of cultural engagement for local, national, and international audiences and arts-workers.

A national institute established to support the worldwide community of Hungarian education, the Balassi Institute plays a key role in the professional direction of cultural affairs. Similar to Germany's Goethe Institut, the United Kingdom's British Council, or Spain's Instituto Cervantes, the Balassi Institute's main objective is to project a quality-oriented image of Hungary, thereby increasing its prestige in the international sphere, while strengthening and preserving all facets of Hungarian culture both within and outside of Hungary's borders.

Jaro Vinarsky: ANIMALINSIDE

Thursday, November 15, 2014, 8:00 p.m.
Friday, November 16, 2014, 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, November 17, 2014, 8:00 p.m.
Experimental Theater, Abrons Arts Center
$20 General Admission
www.abronsartscenter.org/performances/animalinside.html

2013 Bessie Award Winner Jaro Vinarsky returns with the American premiere of his newest duet, ANIMALINSIDE. This work for two dancers investigates the extreme states of a man's relationship to his own body, to another man, and to viewers. Vinarsky's ANIMALINSIDE, a suite of poem-like stories, is inspired by Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai and German painter Max Neumann's book of the same title.

Jaro Vinarsky is a Slovakian dancer and choreographer. Having studied choreography in Bratislava and Prague, he is a longtime collaborator of Karine Ponties of Dame de pic Ensemble and Pavel Zustiak's company, Palissimo. He was awarded a Bessie in 2013 for his performance in Bastard, the first part of Palissimo's Painted Bird trilogy. While performing in Prague in 2004, Vinarsky was also awarded the Sazka Award for "Newcomer of the Year."

Jaro Vinarský and Marek Mensik, performers
Jaro Vinarský, direction and choreography
Thomas Moravek, lighting design
Jan Burian, original score
Produced by SKOK! (Slovakia)

Hodworks: Dawn

Saturday, November 22, 2014, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, November 23, 2014, 7:30 p.m.
The Playhouse, Abrons Arts Center
Suggested Admission
www.abronsartscenter.org/performances/hdworks-dawn-2014.html

"During the rehearsals I am most interested in those movements that I have difficulties to describe and classify, or about which I cannot decide what I actually see." - Adrienn Hód, choreographer In Dawn, the latest production of Hodworks, the naked human body takes center stage, just inches from the audience which will be seated onstage. One gets to witness the body's anatomical-mechanical nature or "animal-like quality," which is so much a taboo of our times. The continuity of the interactions and the unstoppable series of changes turn this daring piece into a performance, which demands an exceptionally high level of consciousness, strength, and sensitivity from the dancers. Dawn is an autonomous and radical research of the body, free from prejudices-just as to be expected from Adrienn Hód.

Dawn was selected by the Aerowaves network as a 2014 Priority Company, and received the 2013 Rudolf Lábán Award for outstanding contemporary dance.

Adrienn Hód, choreography
Emese Cuhorka, Júlia Garai, Csaba Molnár, Marcio Canabarro, performers
Zoltán Mizsei, live music
Zsolt S?rés Ahad, music consultant
Ármin Szabó-Székely, Marco Torrice, Zsolt S?rés, consultants
Kata Dézsi, lighting design
Co-produced by Trafó - House of Contemporary Arts

Radio Ballet: The Nature of Love

Friday, December 5, 2014, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, December 6, 2014, 8:00 p.m.
Experimental Theater, Abrons Arts Center
Suggested Admission
www.abronsartscenter.org/performances/radio-ballet-the-nature-of.html

Radioballet makes its U.S. debut with The Nature of Love, a choreographed fictionalization of the private and shared experiences of the two performers. Avoiding worn clichés of movements and gestures, their duet is a lyrical and wry commentary on the demented state called love.

The company is comprised of two Hungarian independent dance artists, Bea Egyed and Milán Újvári. After finishing her studies at the Hungarian Dance Academy, Bea Egyed became a freelance dance artist. She has worked with several independent choreographers such as Rita Góbi, Klári Pataky, Ferenc Fehér, Eleonore Valere-Lachky and The Symptoms. She is currently working with the Éva Duda Dance Company. Milan Újvári has worked with several companies such as Compagnie Pál Frenák, Cirque du Soleil-Delirium and Krétakör Theater. He is a freelance dance artist who has recently collaborated with Anna Réti, Rui Horta, Nigel Charnock and Éva Duda.

Livia Fuchs writes of the work: "The subject is the nature, or we can safely say, the mystery of love...Yet the exuberant experience of this, having escaped words, has for too long become banal on stage, materializing itself in the form of easy to read gestures and the precious or aggressive imitation of sex...Subsequent episodes sketch the story of love: the shyness of the boy and the almost Amazonic aggression of the girl, the tentativeness of the overtures, while also recording the difference in their emotional states through their respective monologues. We see tempter and temptee, alternatively coy and self-surrendering, and later the process of working out how to be together and do so, in the end, without having to surrender oneself after all. Mutual touches reinforce this movement toward happiness and we arrive, at the end, in a space that opens up over a carpet of dead roses to realize what Charles Bukowski talks about in his poem 'The Definition': that the nature of love is not something you can distill and define, but that it is very much within our power to scream out, through words or movement, what we experience in love."

Bea Egyed, Milán Újvári, choreography and performers
Montage, music
Charles Bukowski, Miklós Radnóti, text
Máté Andrássy, dramartugical assistant
Ferenc Payer, lighting design
Dániel Dömölky, photography
Márton Gothár, film