Mouvement, rythme, danse — Les débuts de la danse moderne en Hongrie (1902-1950) — Institut Liszt, Centre Culturel Hongrois Paris — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 7 → December 14, 2013

The beginning of Hungarian modern dance dates back to 1902, the date of the first performance of Isadora Duncan in Hungary. From 1912, the first schools of the “art of movement” emerged under the influence of Alice Madzsar and Valéria Dienes (respective students of Bess Mensendieck and Raymond Duncan) who maintained close relationship with the group of artists named Nyolcak (The Eights) and also with other progressive intellectual groups like (Galilei Kör, Vasárnapi Kör). From 1920, the new schools multiplied: Olga Szentpál introduced the Jacques Dalcroze method in Hungary, whereas Lili Kállai did the same with the Mary Wigman system. The “orchestral art” peaked at the end of the 1920s with the Christian themed choir works of Valéria Dénes and with the psychological pieces of Ödön Palasovszky and Alice Madzsar. The Hungarian scenes disappeared in 1950, because the communist regime found them “too bourgeois”.

The exhibition traces the history of “orchestral art” and its relationship with the music of Béla Bartók and Joseph Kosma through vintage photos of the era’s great photographers — József Pécsi, André Kertész, Ergy Landau, Angelo, Dénes Rónai, Olga Máté, Ada Ackermann.