PLACCC Dance 2023 11May – 8 June

The dance-focused special edition of PLACCC Festival is back with its third edition, and this year it will be introduced by two “walking” projects before the dance permeates the public spaces of the city.

Back in 2021, PLACCC Dance, the dance-focused special edition of PLACCC International Festival of Site-specific Art and Art in Public Space, was born from the meeting of three endeavours. On the one hand, over the years, the organisers of the festival have been working with more and more Hungarian dancers and choreographers, either for a single project or on a longer-term basis. On the other hand, at the end of the first year of the pandemic, the restrictions – although easing but still very much a part of our lives – were not an obstacle but an inspiration, and the artists came up with extremely varied and innovative forms that we wanted to give the opportunity to showcase. Finally, we felt important – in spite of the strong international character of PLACCC – to give opportunities specifically to Hungarian artists, thus supporting them, even if only to a small extent, during/after the months of the pandemic.

In the third year of PLACCC Dance, these aspirations have been modified and developed – just as our public spaces and public realm have changed in Hungary.  
In 2021, the public space was the field of reopening after the first year of the Covid, and artists aimed to release the trauma of the pandemic and the lockdowns in their outdoor works, which were the only possibility to present a public performance that time. In the current Budapest, however, artists have to step out into a public space that has been the field of (student) protests for weeks against the Hungarian government’s new education laws, which have been suppressed with tear gas and police violence.
The performances of PLACCC Dance 2023 do not directly refer to these current events – yet they inevitably juxtapose the sometimes subtle, sometimes dynamic expressiveness of dance with the violence on the streets and what lies behind it. Artists explore the relationship between (public) space and the body – taking (public) space as a field of experimentation, they search for the meaning, the significance and function of the dancer’s body in this space.

We present five dance pieces in frame of PLACCC Dance 2023 – they are all new creations or public space adaptations of staged performances. What has remained unchanged since 2021 is that the two main focuses of the programme are dance in public space and creative innovation. The most characteristic change between the program selection of the two first years of PLACCC Dance and of this year’s edition is that the artists – after a significantly strong interest in creating in nature during and right after the Covid-years – found their way back to urban spaces. In our 2023 edition, the invited artists will explore the relationship between (public) space and the body – taking (public) space as a field of experimentation, they will search for the meaning, the significance and function of the dancer’s body in this space.
What does the body say when young or aging, when collective or excluded?

Programme