Drawing on the urban walking practice dérive, Drift is a 40-minute-long spatial symphony designed for busy urban spaces that sheds light on the beauty and complexity of pedestrian motion.

During the piece, fifteen performers move along concealed pathways carrying portable speakers that each play one layer of a composition, enveloping the public setting in a mesmerising aural sphere. As the sound sources are completely hidden from the audience, it’s the spatial movement of these subtle, continuous tones that gradually unravel the piece’s choreography.

As the performers intersect with the pedestrian movement, they shape, distort and redirect our perception, allowing us to become aware of the habits and behaviour we unconsciously adopt in these transitional spaces.

Step by step, the dramaturgy of the choreography intensifies, luring more and more onlookers into its whirling pool of sound – and morphing the public space into something that is about more than solely transit.

Supported by Prague Quadriennale, Workshop Foundation, Cross Attic


REVIEWS:

"This almost invisible, more audible audio-physical performance attracts the attention of the pedestrians, old, young, couples and families as well as the invited audience with an organic, yet elementary force. (...) Somló's performance is a celebration and a game at the same time, and whatever moves us more, we can forget for a little while about the smog and what is waiting for us on the crowded tram."
Laudation for Laban Rudolf-award 2019,  nomination Albert Dorottya, Szinház magazine

"For fifty minutes the Széll Kálmán square is turned into a spatial symphony, with a feeling of an ungraspable, unidentifiable, invisible energy. This is a beautiful, immersing, mesmerizing dance, which we can percieve not with our eyes, but with our ears, bodies and self."
Albert Dorottya, Szinház magazine


„The key of the piece is the spot on dramaturgy - how it generates doubt and couriosity in the audience and then how it creates surprises. (...) It takes some time until we realise how the piece invisibly changes our relation to the space, each other and ourselves.”
Králl Csaba, Élet és Irodalom

„As the performers inital move-obstacle-turn-move pattern is combined with speeding up, slowing down and running, it creates an abstract model of the urban pedestrian movements(...) In this way they change their values and meaning: the performance starts to attain the secure feeling of everyday existence, the pedestrian presence attains the beauty of the choreographed movement.”
Elefánti Emma, F21.hu

"Drift was hauntingly beautiful. It slowly entered my consciousness like an internal thought that I gently realized was a public experience. The tonality of the sound was memorizing and caught my attention physically before I realized my attention was caught consciously. I loved loved loved this work."
D. Chase Angier, Curator of the Formations section of Prague Quadriennale'19


DATES:



2023 Sept. 17.  //  Széll Kálmán Tér, Budapest, Hungary
2023 Aug. 27.  //  Ljubljana, Slovenia
2023 Aug. 1.  //  Passage Festival, Helsingor, Denmark

2022 Sept. 18.  //  Széll Kálmán Tér, Budapest, Hungary
2022 Sept. 9-11.  //  Fira Tarrega Festival, Tarrega, Spain
2022 May. 7.   //  Novi Sad, Serbia

2021 Sept. 12.  //  Széll Kálmán Tér, Budapest, Hungary

2020 Nov. 28.  //  Water Festival, Burgas, Bulgaria
2020 Aug. 16.  //  Széll Kálmán tér, Budapest, Hungary
2020 Aug 14.  //  Thealter Festival, Szeged, Hungary

2019 Sept. 22.  //  Placcc Festival, Széll Kálmán tér, Budapest
2019 June 12-13.  //  Prague Quadriennale, Prague PREMIER