Childless series
The Unborn || AMeNeSz – A meg nem született [2018], So Then the Stork || Akkor majd a gólya [2019], and Inside My Belly || Hasamban [2019] are the three pieces which I now call Childless Trilogy, or Childless Series. These dance theatre works are based on reports with people facing childlessness, demographic research, scientific facts and movement improvisations.
First I wanted to give voice for those who wanted / wished to have child, but it wasn’t given to them. For this theme, I felt the need of spoken words and sentences, and I also preferred to work it through interaction and discussion, so I invited Attila Antal (theatre director, composer) into the process to co-create the piece.
Although we both felt that childlessness is not a female subject, but rather a story (or lack) of a relationship, we unintentionally fall into the female side of the question, what we realized when the piece was on stage. So there raised the need to hear the voice of men. We started to work on the next piece, focusing on male stories, and that became So Then the Stork. The third piece, Inside My Belly is an adaptation of the first, female version with much less text and spoken words, and a more installative, visual approach.
The journey so far
This three years of creative process, and since the already passed three years, as the afterlife of the performances is a turning point in my career as choreographer. Somehow I feel like I was growing adult in the profession through these works – with all the difficulties, decisions, mistakes and consequences, and also with the supportive energy, recognition and renewable capacity what it all brought into my life. We had to face serious fight on copyright issue, deal with extremely polarized (either lauditive, or degrading) professional criticism, personal incompatibility – and on the other hand very supportive vibes – within the teams. And so on.
The most we could perform the male version, So Then the Stork.
It has a strong, and a kind of black&white energy:
– it was premiered within the opening week of the National Dance Theatre;
– the last two times we performed it in situations, when something was there „for the last time”;
– the critical reflection was super polarized – and in each case I felt like none of the „sides” really saw the piece, but rather the confirmation / lack of confirmation of their political thoughts on the subject;
It was also a lesson for us to understand: theatre is never unpolitical.
The premiere was indeed not a good show. It was not ready yet, it was raw, not cooked… Later we had chance to go on with, but we had to learn how to continue after all. It wasn’t easy to continue at all. There was a change in the team, some reduction in the material, and something started to mature… to cook.
Recently less and less, but I can still feel, as a consequence of the huge hype around the premiere, that many people in the local dance field associate me with that, and only that performance, so it burned on me like a scarlet letter. Although along the way this piece became something I can fully stand behind, and stand for.
And with these experiences in the pocket, I’m not there any more. I mean that as creator I’m now interested in different choices and approaches, which definitely leads to different forms. But I’m happy and glad for this piece.
In 2021 it became part of the ‘National Dance Theatre 20’ album, thanks to the photo of Károly Csorba, and in 2022 it’s invited to the Budapest Spring Festival off programs, as a studio performance followed by a moderated discussion.