Presented as a featured side program of the 12th International Monodance Festival, taking place in Budapest on April 26, students from three prominent Central European dance universities take the stage for this public presentation as part of the Beyond Front@: Bridging Periphery project.
Closing a multi-day educational program between the academies of Zagreb, Krakow, and Budapest, the event aims to build bridges between different art schools through the language of dance. The program features three short performances, showcasing the diversity of the region’s emerging generation: from playful childhood perspectives to noir atmospheres and abstract body memory.
Performance program
AST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Krakow (PL): Family Friendly
Family Friendly is a story about family as a landscape of memory inscribed in the body. From everyday gestures and subtle impulses, relationships woven with closeness, tension, and unexpected care unfold. Individual stories intertwine into a collective organism, where the body becomes an archive of experienced encounters.
Creators: Created within Joanna Brodniak-Szymusiak’s physical dance course with 3rd-year students of AST Krakow (Dance Theater Department in Bytom).
Hungarian Dance University (HU): S-eparated
The piece does not tell a story but portrays states of being: it examines closeness, distancing, and the boundaries of separation. Bodies move in the same space, yet remain separated by invisible distances. The collective movement gradually dissolves, shifting the focus to the isolated body and the experience of being alone in a crowd.
Performed by: Students of the Hungarian Dance University.
Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb (HR): MINIMI
“What matters is being big on the inside.”
MINIMI is a dance theater piece for children aged 4+ (and adults), exploring “smallness” in a world built for “the big.” Through dance, song, and playful imagination, it challenges the adult-centric view, encouraging the audience to discover their own strength and creativity – even when everything around them seems too large.
Concept and choreography: Sanja Frühwald
Credits: Music: Damir Šimunović | Set and costume: Zdravka Ivandija Kirigin | Video: Davor Konjikušić | Lighting design: Marino Frankola
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Date and Venue
26 April, 2026, 3:00 PM
Bethlen Square Theater (1071 Budapest, Bethlen Gábor tér 3.)
For more information about the performances and the festival, please visit the website of Bethlen Square Theater.
The Bridging Academies – Central European Dance Academies Presentation is realized within the framework of the Beyond Front@ Bridging Periphery project, which is a Creative Europe project (2023-2026) created by Közép-Európa Táncszínház / Central Europe Dance Theatre (Hungary), Bunker (Slovenia), Hrvatski institut za pokret i ples – HIPP (Croatia), Krakowski Teatr Tańca (Poland), M Studio (Romania) and Vitlycke – Centre for Performing Arts (Sweden) to foster local development of the contemporary dance fields.
