Premiere Anna Biczók – Delicate

In the frame of the Creative Crossroad activity, Anna Biczók was selected by Workshop Foundation to receive a 2 years structural support by the LLB network and WSF to work on her latest productions.
She is receiving the possibility to give a workshop at ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival as well as a 2 weeks residency in Vienna, another residency at Les Brigittines organised by STUK Leuven, as well as the possibility to attend and contribute to the Choreographic Convention in Berlin in 2022.

During Anna’s participation in the Creative Crossroads artist support programme there have been several important milestones, such as co-creation with Karin Pauer (Austrian dancer selected by danceWEB for the Creative Crossroads programme), premiere of "DELICATE" at Trafo, participation in the Choreographic Convention, co-creation with Ula Zurek.

During Q3 of 2021 (September 2021), Anna Biczók has worked with Austrian dancer choreographer Karin Pauer during Karin’s residency in Budapest. Anna participated as a dancer in Karin’s new production WE WERE NEVER ONE.

During Q3-Q4 of 2021, Anna prepared for the  first rehearsal period of her upcoming premiere DELICATE. The artists spent a residency at Workshop Foundation in November with Karin Pauer, Sasha Portyannikova and Rozi Mákó. In December, the artists spent two weeks in Stockholm at MDT and they continued working on the new piece DELICATE. Then, they spent the residency in Brussels at the chapel of Les Brigittines, organized by STUK. On 4-5 May, DELICATE premiere took place at Trafó in Budapest. The next milestone was in the frame of the Choreographic Convention program organized by Workshop Foundation and danceWEB. In the Budapest part of the program Anna led a Working Group on the topic Sustainability of the human body. In the Vienna part, Anna participated in a roundtable discussion. The next milestone was the PSR - Anna went to Vienna to meet up with other Creative Crossroads artists and co-create together. In addition, Anna had a plan to create a duet with Polish dancer Ula Zerek. Ula and Anna asked Gyula Cserepes to be their artistic consultant. Due to Covid this project hasn’t found its final form yet in the Creative Crossroads timeframes.

All in all, the collaboration with Anna Biczók was a success, both parties were satisfied with the collaboration as well as the results. We also managed to establish a strong feedback attitude, the pillars of the Life Long Burning project, through continued communication and documentation of lessons learned, identifying the most important take-aways.

View her experience report on the 2 years structural support by Workshop Foundation in the upper right column.

Anna Biczók is a dance artist, performer, choreographer based in Budapest, Hungary. In her works she explores body and movement as containers and mediums of the dancer’s personal dimensions (sensations, impressions, memories, emotions, fantasies). She looks at the body as an archive of all these inputs, searches for possibilities of translating them into movement, then finding words again to express the somatic experience.
Building from narratives of personal identity that are embedded in the collective, Biczók draws inspiration from her Eastern European heritage and way of living. Her strong connection to texts, to literature and to languages has a deep impact on her work.
During the Creative Crossroads cycle, Biczók continues to develop her practice using structured improvised movement and storytelling, connecting verbal and non-verbal territories of experience.
She is currently working on a duo with Polish dancer Ula Zerek, co-developing material about the peculiarities of living as women in post-communist Eastern European countries, and exploring the layers of meaning derived from their experiences. In her further plans Biczók is about to create a group piece for three dancers. This work intends to step out of the Eastern European context and compares different personal heritages with their possible cultural conflicts.

Premiere "Delicate" at trafó Budapest

The lives of a Russian, an Austrian and a Hungarian woman intertwine with their everyday movements. Their dance evokes the experience of their female ancestors through the memories carried in their bodies.  

"How much does the body express itself, how does it communicate its personal and cultural content through dance? Does it speak differently if words do not support it? If we don't help, 'what we dance about'? We shaped the dancers' original stories through dialogues between movement and text, and then abandoned the texts. With the help of our ancestors, we searched for what it means to be an Austrian, a Hungarian and a Russian woman on the same stage. Women next door, on the same side or on different ones. It's a sensitive area." (Anna Biczók)  

Performers: Adél Juhász, Karin Pauer, Sasha PortyannikovaMusic: Rozi MákóLight: Kata DézsiCostume: Csenge VassGraphics: Bori MákóAssistant to choreographer: Virág AranyChoreographer: Anna BiczókPartner: Workshop FoundationCoproduction partner: STUK Huis voor DansSupporters: Nemzeti Kulturális Alap, Emberi Erőforrások Minisztériuma, Creative Crossroads - Life Long Burning, Kreatív Európa Program, danceWEB, Sín Kulturális KözpontSpecial thanks: Ármin Szabó-Székely, László Fülöp, Zsófia Tamara Vadas, Gáspár Téri, Andrea Kovács

During the residency at STUK/Leuven, Anna Biczok is working on her latest production
"TRILATERAL. 100 years of Central/Eastern European Women)":

Artistic direction: Anna Biczok
Performance: Adel Juhasz, Karin Pauer, Sasha Portyannikova
Sound: Rozi Mako
Set Design: Bori Mako
Light Design: Kata Dezsi

TRILATERAL is part of a work cycle where dance performance is dealing with the body of the performer and all information this body contains. Body is a personal and collective archive, a material that is itself the proof of its origin. An imprint of the family heritage or the socio-cultural environment it comes from/ exists in.
Previous projects used text and movement as equal elements, where spoken language and storytelling helped the viewers contextualise the body's movements. In this new work the intention is to go deeper in the possibilities of communicating the body’s archive by movement expression, and use less verbal language of the performers.

TRILATERAL is a contemporary dance performance in a black box that can be viewed from three sides of the square shaped stage. The production deals with personal imprints of three women from Central- and Eastern Europe, and translates their particular sociocultural conditioning into deeply embodied movement practices of identity.

The starting point of TRILATERAL is the point of view of the choreographer’s Russian and Hungarian origin, that already incorporates gender role conditionings from two different cultures. This work intends to widen this perspective with Austrian, Russian/German dancers as neighbouring identity perspectives that have many meeting points and intersections due to geographical closeness and centuries of historical events. The question is how close or how different we are, and how can we make each other more rich by seeing each other from these different perspectives that are so interrelated.

TRILATERAL aims to embody, sense and visualize a century of working class women on a subjective and intuitive level, questioning the partly socialist past, its conditioning and its aesthetic effect, but looks for these traces through our lives today, our own living bodies, that holds these memories and shapes our present and future.

FORMAT
The approx. 60 minute performace happens at 10x10 meters stage, audience sits around on three sides. All performers and the musician are present and seen throughout the time. The space is simple and minimal, the white floor and the open walls (no curtains) of the space are its borders.

The atmosphere is etheric and serious as a starting point, then has softness, intimacy and humour in the performers’ expressions and interactions within themselves and with the audience members. The aim is to create a friendly and cosy atmosphere, as if we were in a wide living room full of memories, emotions, touches and smiles. When the weight of lives get lightness in sharing and acceptance.

SET DESIGN
White floor and white materials hanged serve as surfaces for animation screened on them. The films developed by Bori Mako intend to be monochrome memories of socialist visuals, inspired by sgrafittos of the last century that were very widely used on living houses in Austria, Soviet Union and Hungary, too. These pictures are reminiscents of working class’ everyday activities, and has lot of illustrations on women in everyday life.

SOUND
This will be the second collaboration with musician and composer Rozi Mako. Live music will be developed together with movement materials, interweaving improvised sequences of dance and sound into one organic essence.

REHEARSAL PERIODS
2 weeks November 2021 - @Workshop Foundation Budapest
2 weeks February-March 2022 - residency @STUK Leuven as part of Creative Crossroads/ Life Long Burning
2,5 weeks April/May 2022 @Workshop Foundation Budapest

Premiere: 4-5 May Trafo House of Contemporary Arts Budapest

Workshop "Waxing Gibbous Moon Embodiment Party"

What is there that cannot be seen? What is the moment where we create meaning? How do sensations, image, sound and text complete each other to make us understand phenomena as “experience”?

We will dance a lot and will continuously move the focus of our perception. Using tools such as breath work, Yoga, the Feldenkrais method, astrology, and Experiential Anatomy, we go on a quest of finding the body’s willingness for expression. Starting from the perception of the body’s inner space and moving to outer space, experiences of memories, imagination, impressions, emotions will get incorporated. Is this an overwhelming set of information to incorporate? We sort them out and create our own narration and context by reflecting through writing, recreating our dance through storytelling.

How do these contexts define the experience of dance? Is there a language to our dance? A language, that is different to our dance? A language rooted in our bodies’ wisdom – an embodiment dance party under the waxing gibbous moon.

Gallery pics "Delicate" by Molnár Zoilly