After studying classical ballet, gymnastics, jazz and modern dance in Hungary and Vienna, Márta Ladjánszki co-founded KOMPmANIA Contemporary Dance Theatre at the end of 1996. Until 2002 she worked there as dancer and co-creator and had her own works outside that group, mainly in Hungarian projects. She also started her solo career and won several prizes. In 2001 she was invited to join the L1 Independent Dancers’ Partnership, which was founded by seven dancers/creators in Budapest.
In recent years she has started to collaborate with independent artists and to create group pieces as well. Her interest is the body and its physical limits, and the combination of music with choreography, using live music as well.
STILL depicts the last chapter of a relationship between a man in a coma and a woman, examining the process of letting go from rejection of the tragic truth until acquiescence. The background story emerges through very subtle hints. While the interpretation of the state of coma seems quite feasible, we might proceed by two further interpretations, which are likewise relevant. The first is to suppose that the man is already dead and lives solely in the girl’s memory, so that what we see is her mourning, whereas the second is to suppose that the given situation, in which the one cannot hear, see or sense the other, alludes to the general nature of communication, to the notion that any attempt to connect people to each other is a mere projection even between two healthy persons, and as such is completely illusory.
Dancers: Júlia Garai and Zsolt Varga
Music: montage by Varga Zsolt
Costume: Butterfly
Concept/director: Márta Ladjánszki
Though the piece is referred to as a solo by the choreographer Marta Ladjanszki, the partner of Julia Garai, the man in a coma played by Zsolt Varga accomplishes a rather demanding task on stage. He has to embody a completely helpless human being, relaxing his muscles totally in order to enable the dancer to execute her loving, or at times furious, movements unopposed, without any resistance. (…) Julia Garai, permanent dancer of Adrienn Hód, has recently been playing almost exclusively ironic/self-ironic roles. In Ladjanszki’s piece however, she has the opportunity to show a more sensitive, vulnerable and passionate side of her personality. What is common to both approaches is the conscious informality of her presence on stage (more precisely, its illusion) which this time is more startling than a stylized farewell or mourning. STILL is built of moving, sensitive and exceptionally subtle shades which anatomize with rare honesty the taboo attached to bereavement.
Ágnes Veronika Tóth
Main supporter: L1 Independent Dancers’ Partnership - L1 danceLab
Her company has toured extensively abroad and won several awards internationally.