Cold Comfort helps us to experience how extreme cold and heat can be educational. Listening to interviews with experts in mountaineering, ice sculpting and experimental health research, the question arises. The question is a rhetorical one, giving way to a lament. Rather, we open up the experience of meditation to the intense changes in temperature extremes to see if it helps us to experience (even momentary) full presence. Here the ego dissolves and the ‘eco’ emerges – feeling at once delightfully insignificant and yet deeply alive in the unfathomable scale of the world’s structure.
SVUNG is an ever-changing collective of dancers, dance educators and applied theatre practitioners – their work intersects different disciplines, mixing elements of somatics, architecture, visual art, food design, tour guiding and many more.
SVUNG conducts artistic research, designing workshops, performance sessions, participatory events and installations where participants explore the sonic, natural and material environment around them, and not least themselves.
Their participatory performance Cold Comfort, which debuted at the minus20degree festival in January 2024 in Flachau, Austria, reflects on the cold and its somatic experience. The audio-driven, ever-present work shared the experience of extreme cold with the audience through expert interviews and the physical experience of the dynamics of cold and heat.
The actions that build up the performance gradually reinforce this experience: from body-centred exercises in an outdoor venue (getting to know the snow, the cold, movement exercises) to dipping in icy water for somatic exploration.
The programme was also invited to the European Capital of Culture programme of the Salzkammergut in Gmunden (AT) in November, in collaboration with the Plateau Blo Floating Sauna project.
Created by:
Luca Borsos, Kinga Szemessy, Napsugár Trömböczky, Zden Brungot Svíteková
Performed by:
Luca Borsos, Napsugár Trömböczky
Dates and times:
6th February 2025, 4PM-5.30PM
6th February 2025, 6PM-7.30PM
Location: Római-part Free Beach, 1039 Budapest, Kossuth Lajos üdülőpart
Language: Hungarian, but English translation is available (please let us know if you do not understand Hungarian)
Ticketed programme.
The ticket price includes the price of using a mobile Finnish sauna during the performance.
Ticket prices:
Full-price ticket: 5,400 HUF
Discount ticket (student-pensioner): 3,900 HUF
Supporter ticket: 7,000 HUF
Tickets purchase: HERE
The performance can be attended at the own risk of the spectators.
A photo and audio recording will be made at the event. By participating in the event, the participant gives his/her consent to the recording and publication of his/her appearance and expressions.
Special Thanks:
SaunaTruck
VALYO – Város és Folyó Egyesület
Fák a Rómain