The first time I experienced a Hungarian applause, I found it amusing; by the third time, not so much. A rhythm conforms the audience. They clap fast, slow, fast again, making it awkward to break stride and express a personal response to a performance. Perhaps this is only apparent to me in light of worrisome developments in Europe’s socio-political landscape, conversations on which form the context of my watching this show. But the urge to stamp my feet, holler ‘bravo’, and assert individuality grows louder the longer we clap in time, not so much ‘together’ as morphed into one. 

Les Jolies Choses, by Canadian Catherine Gaudet, which we saw (and applauded, Hungarian-style) at Budapest’s Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, is a dance that flourishes through arduous obedience to structure. Audiences too, must endure a pattern, one that persists so long it becomes a way of being. The five dancers embody it in the directions they face and the shapes they make. Twist, bend, swing, their upper bodies proceed with fidelity to form while their legs stay rooted to the spot. The dancers appear to move as individuals, but really are just cogs of a bigger image, churning, repeating, developing. When they do move from isolated spots, it is as if programmed on a specific course, filling the required spots of stage as they continue to twist, bend, swing. 

The ‘rotating line’ they form becomes the centrepiece, the base which if they dare break out from, they must return to. After a long time, one braves it. An absurd groove sets him apart, five seconds to wiggle like never again, before getting back into line. He doesn’t seem to choose this, exactly. The moment is a balloon punctured; pressure ruptured. Self-expression seeps through cracks in the iron curtain. When it passes, I wonder if I imagined it. They continue in their rotating line. 

No, I am certain. There is a chink in this armour. 

As right-wing ideals infect Europe, the arts made both enemy and victim, a precious value surrounds our voices as creatives; or at least, those still free to speak. I acknowledge my privilege, that the system I identify in Les Jolie Choses is one I myself am not victim to. But aren’t we all tied up in a system, one way or another? The question of whether art is political feels no longer worth asking. Shortly before we Springback writers had gathered in Budapest, Slovakia hurtled into phase one of a culture strike. As we parted ways, Austria’s far right FPÖ party won the legislative election. In between these events, our intersection of writers from across Europe tossed and turned over a brewing culture war and creeping creative censorship. What do I see in Les Jolie Choses? In their relentless adherence to structure, I see fearful or brainwashed compliance. In their sweat and exhaustion, I see the sickly spread of pernicious propaganda and policies. In their resilience, and sudden expressions of movement, I see revolt, and desire to liberate the Self. Yet I can’t help wondering: Gaudet’s piece was made in Canada, not Hungary; am I reading things into the work, primed by my context here in Budapest?

That same night, in a low-lit basement of the same venue, we are led through a guided dance jam by Gyula Cserepes. Twenty writers wound tight in words and thoughts find their way into disinhibited – thoughtless – movement. The jam sits in stark contrast with the dance witnessed moments before, but that is not to say Les Jolies Choses possesses no sense of freedom, nor that the jam was absent of structure. The cliché goes that we don’t know true freedom until breaking free of what binds us. Gaudet’s performers, though, never break free entirely. In the last moments of the piece, they abandon all rules but one: the line they form. The structure remains. And yet I feel, and they seem… liberated? The movement in our dance jam too, never escapes Cserepes’ gentle prompts, and yet I feel free as bird, light as a kite, and honest to my instincts in that moment. 

In a rehearsal of a work-in-progress by Réka Szábo for a mixed-ability, inclusive dance project (a collaboration with Spanish choreographer Carmen Vilches), that same instinct was put to play. In quirky, unfiltered interactions, bodies are explored, space dissected, and authenticity made central to the effect. The dancers here are free to improvise, but to quote cultural historian Johan Huizinga from his 1938 book Homo Ludens, ‘Inside the playground an absolute and peculiar order reigns / All play has its rules. They determine what “holds” in the temporary world circumscribed by play.’ Though their interactions are instinctive, a raw jigsaw of movements that emerge and disappear, they exist within Szabó’s loose structure of the piece, a stencil filled by its performers. 

Les Jolies Choses sits at the extreme end of the scale, where threat, polarisation and compliance fester. The fabric of the piece, its anonymising structure, reflects no feasible landscape for unique, personal expression. All the same, individuality squeezes through its airless gaps, maybe even fuelled by the constrictions. Flourish this dance does, even if only as much as the ruled lines dictate.