Dance In Time
Hungarian 'Dance' waltzes through Tennessee

by Richard Christiansen
Chicago Tribune, Chief Critic

KNOXVILLE - Loosely translated, Össztánc means "Let's dance together" - wich is all the Hungarian you will ever need to know in order to understand and appreciate the remarkable production from Budapest that has just made its North Amercian debut inl, of all places, Tennessee.

"Dance in time", as this musical is now called in English, is a piece that was created in Budapest for a Budapest audience, yet this highly löcal work, wich relies in part on knowledge of specific events in Hungarian history, has turned into a major success for its brief run in the Clarence Brown Theatre on the campus of the University of Tennessee. László Marton, who created the show, is a hungarian director who in the last few years has compiled substantial United States credits, including productions of Ferenc Molnár's "The Play's the Thing" and Moliere's "The school for wives" at Court Theater in Chicago. Four years ago, as the inaugural production of the newly renovated Vígszínház theater in Budapest, Marton joined with outhor Pál Békés to fashion a work that he believed. Would streche the imaginations of the actors and his audience. Taking as a model the 1982 french film, 'Le Baal', which used a parisian balroom to mirror a half century of cultural and social changes in french history, Marton drew on national and his own familial memories to weave a flashback Saga of seven decades of hungarian history, embodied in the dance and dancers of a lonely hearts balroom in Budapest.

The show was a tremendous success at the Vígszínház, where it is about to enter its fifth season in repertory, and, because it has no dialogue, it was popular with foreign visitors to. But at no time, even when Clarence Brown executives so the show and pressed Marton to bring it to their theater, was he sure that he would travel well.

He need not have worried. The predoninantly useful professional / student american cast (including Chicagoan Jenifer Rives) made an inmediate imotional connection to the hungarian story; and the show's inventive combination of mime, dance and music was happily accepted and applaused by the Knoxville audience.

Much of 'Dance in time' is very witty. This includes 15-minutes opening sequence, in which the men and women entering the ballroom step to the front of the stage one by one, in 'Chorus Line' style, and instantly establish their personalities through the way their primp in front of imagine mirror. The show is often raucously funny, as when a group of teenagers get the first taste of Coca-Cola, and, Johanna Bodor's exuberant choreography, dance to a 45 rpm recording of Bill Hailey's "Rock around the Clock".

But there are also much more sober passages dealing with the German and Russian occupations of Hungary and the quashing of the October, 1956 revolution. When the nazis arrive, half the dancers, with yellow start of David suddenly sprouting on their clouds, are herded of the death camps. The rear walls of the ballroom part and the forlorn dancers, stripped to their undergarments, stand huddled in the rear of the stage cought in a bright spotlight. Similarly, when the conquering Russions arrive, they gather many of the ballroom's men into a group and shuffle them of to exhile in a flurry of snow.

Moments such these imbue 'Dance in time' with a univesality that reaches far biant local color; and it is the hope of Clarence Brown officials that the show, which is to end its engagement next sunday, will be able to travel to toher thaters in other parts of the United States.

Whatever happens, the show is a smash in Tennessee. "See it. See it. See it." wrote the reviewer for the Knoxville News-Sentinel. "There is nothing left to say."

Pressburg guest performance:
“On Saturday evening the guest performance of Vígszínház, Budapest with their ‘Let’s Dance Together’ production gained a twenty-minute long applause and standing ovation at the Hvlezdoslav Theatre”
LET’S DANCE TOGETHER (DANCE IN TIME)- BÉKÉS-THEATRE DU COMPAGNOLE

Új Szó, 20 March 1995. István Dusza

“With the driving energy of Marton, the opening night audience came to see a rousing performance.”

International Herald Tribune, 1994, Jane Perlez

“For opening work of theatre’s new life Mr. Marton chose Össztánc (Let’s Dance Together), short stories with mime, dance and music but no dialogue. The stories are based on aspects of Hungary’s 20^th century history. The audience loved it… A rousing performance… The theatre is back!"
LET’S DANCE TOGETHER (DANCE IN TIME)- BÉKÉS-THEATRE DU COMPAGNOLE

The New York Times, 27 October, 1994, Jane Perlez

HELEN MEANY

Ettore Scola’s film Le Bal, from 1983, was a tastefully allegorical affair; Pál Békés’s stage version for Budapest’s Vígszínház Comedy Theatre is infused with energy and gaudy glamour. Using dance, gesture, mime, movement and music, it re-creates seven decades of Hungarian history in a shabbily elegant ballroom, moving easily from present to past, without words.
László Marton, who is also the artistic director of the Vígszínház and international associate director of the Abbey, creates memorable stage images through short scenes that are in turn comic, dramatic, erotic and poignant. The opening sequence, which establishes the characters of a group of somewhat desperate, ill-assorted couples, uses broad, cartoonish humour to grab our attention before the mood changes.

As couples unite and separate, their interactions re-create the major events and shifting political allegiances of 20th-century Hungary. Although some of the references will inevitably be lost to a non-Hungarian audience, the key moments are clear : the first and second World Wars, the occupation by Nazis, then communists, the suppression of the 1956 revolution.
As demonstrated by Complicite’s Street Of Crocodiles and Theo Angelopoulos’s filmed Balkan epic, Ulysses’ Gaze, dance and movement can capture a sense of historical flux in ways that may be more expressive than words, and this is marvellously conveyed here.
Choreographed by Zoltán Imre, the 26 members of this versatile ensemble have impressive fluidity and ease, arising from their extended improvisation as they created this piece, drawing on family memories as well as those of their wider society.
Yet what makes this production so appealing is the fact the dance doesn’t always have to carry narrative or even metaphorical weight; there are interludes, such as an exquisite tango sequence, that are pure movement – expressing various kinds of yearning.
In another, a graceful elderly couple regain their youthful vitality as they dance, removing each other’s grey wigs, reversing time. A gleeful moment from the 1960s, a clandestine free-for-all to the rhythms of Rock Around The Clock, it had the Abbey audience on its feet. Audience partecipation never seemed so painless.

In „The Irish Times”, Friday March 19, 2004