photo credit: Tamás Szabó Sipos
CREATURE is a dance-theater work that brings Tamás Marquardt’s transmasculinity into collision and communion with their Hungarian lineage and traditional men’s folk dance. Moving between lecture-performance, ethnography, folk practice, and ancestral invocation, Marquardt’s performance is in dialogue with 19th-century Hungarian queer writer Count Sándor Vay, whose work and life troubled the literary and gender norms of his time. At the work’s center is the legényes, a virtuosic Hungarian men’s folk dance or ‘Lad’s Dance’; a solo using contra-rhythmic body percussion to express masculinity in community, with fiddlers and singers calling out instructions. Performed with co-creators gergo d. farkas, Balázs Oláh and Júlia Vavra, CREATURE reclaims the legényes as a site of transformation—choreography as archive, body as counter-history— where fluidity in the self, in the body, and a being connected to Land is not a condition unique to trans experience but to the condition of being human.
“Encodes the queer, the trans, the fantastical, and everything in between”
– Dance Enthusiast
CREDITS
Co-Creator, Writer, Performer: Tamás Marquardt
Co-Creator, Performer: gergo d. farkas
Co-Creator, Performer: Balázs Oláh
Co-Creator, Performer: Júlia Vavra
Director: Mallory Catlett
Scenography: David Benjamin Smith
Sound: Jaye Kovach
Dramaturgy: Gyula Muskovics
Choreographic Support: zavé martohardjono
Video: Tamás Szabó Sipos
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Tamás Marquardt is a writer and performer who splits their time between Lenapehoking/Brooklyn, Salish land/Vancouver, and Budapest. Their performances have been presented at The Tank, BAX, Under the Radar, U500 Fesztival, Dixon Place, The Collapsable Hole, PuSh, Summerworks, and Buddies in Bad Times. They have worked with JoAnne Akalaitis, Jerome Bel, Ballez, Jess Barbagallo, Mallory Catlett, Fay Nass, Theatre Conspiracy, Theatre Replacement, and the Leaky Heaven Circus. Their book Stray: Memoir of a Runaway (Little A, 2018) was named a Best Queer & History Bio by The Advocate.
FUNDING + SUPPORT
CREATURE is produced and presented by Mabou Mines. Support for CREATURE includes the Arts Quarter Budapest (AQB), Banff Centre for the Arts, BrickAUX, Canada Council for the Arts, Hunter College, PSC-CUNY, Sín Cultural Centre, SuprOmen, U500 Fesztival, and Workshop Foundation. The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council and Materials for the Arts, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the JKW Foundation, the Shubert Foundation, and the W Trust.
VENUE NOTES + ACCESSIBILITY
Mabou Mines
150 1st Avenue (Second Floor)
NYC
By Subway: L to 1st Avenue, F to 2nd Avenue, 6 to Astor Place
Access
Mabou Mines is ADA compliant. Contact the venue at info@maboumines.org for more information about accessibility.
Appropriate Age Range
Recommended for Mature Audiences
Content Warnings
Creature features strobe lighting and loud music
SCHEDULE
Thursday, January 14 at 5pm
Friday, January 15 at 8pm
Saturday, January 16 at 3pm
Sunday, January 17 at 6pm
Tuesday, January 19 at 8pm
Thursday, January 21 at 8pm
Friday, January 22 at 8pm
Saturday, January 23 at 3pm
VENUE
Mabou Mines
150 1st Avenue (Second Floor)
NYC
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