The inspiring influence of the exciting, ever-popular South American musical rhythms and their non-traditional use has long been present in Tamás Topolánszky’s choreographic approach.

This new production uses original melodies and Hungarian-language works by Hungarian composers, with an exciting combination of music written for the production. It is also worth noting the dancers recite fragments of well-known hits as dialogue in the stage situations during the dance steps inspired by Latin rhythms (samba, tango, zouk, rumba, lambada).

Some of the characters who meet in the café are taken from the works of contemporary Brazilian authors, “magical-realistic” figures—adventurers, rebels critical of the system, beautiful women, lonely intellectuals—who dance their adventures, sometimes frivolously, sometimes more intensely.

The everyday, ordinary, and even self-consciously extreme characters who appear in the café according to the dramaturgical organising principle of the music are “a bit like you and me”.

The dance production organises the small joys and great sorrows of people living here and now in Hungary, the cathartically uplifting or hilariously banal episodes of their life stories, stylised into dance, into a kaleidoscopically vibrant unity.

Place: National Dance Theatre Budapest

Address: 1024 Budapest, Kis Rókus u. 16-20