Since its inception, GG Dance Eger has looked for increasingly sophisticated ways to test itself. It now faces several challenges in one. The first is that the company has chosen to work with a national treasure that Hungarians are quicker to offer an opinion on than demonstrate true knowledge of. The Tragedy of Man belongs to the category of literature - with its dizzying, confusing depth and heavy and at times dry verse laying out philosophical rather than dramatic situations laden with elementary passion - that really puts the reader's comprehension skills to the test. The second challenge: how to translate this difficult literature into dance? The essence of this piece lies in its sentences, associations and phrases, and not in its plot. The writing is full of profound thoughts balanced by just as many colourful concepts and visuals. I wanted to use these characteristics to craft an experience for the audience. I believe that the basic concepts represented in this piece, its imagery and associations, can be expressed through the abstract power of dance. Through this medium, I wished to present Madach's masterpiece as a complex creation that brings the visual to the fore to interpret concepts, complemented by the magic of the spoken word at crucial dramatic points - in collaboration with performers from the Géza Gárdonyi Theatre. (Tamás Topolánszky)

Presented by: National Dance Theatre