INTERVIEWS
"Who has already been shouted at, 'What the fuck is this shit?!'" Krisztina Orbán, Revizor.hu
"We are throwing at the audience softer and harder objects of attention"
w/Imre Vass, Török Ákos, Fidelio, in Hungarian
"The essence of site-specificity for me is to highlight the essence of a space, open up the perception of the audience and minimize the gap between them and the ‘here and now’."
Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel, Unlimited Drag
"I am interested in the expereience of togetherness, the bodily presence in the space that surrounds us. For me, interdisciplinary forms serve these experiences the best. If the balance of narrative, performative or musical parts would be unequal, there would be an unnecessary focus. In this way I can create a liminal space where the audience can have more attention on their perception, and the expereience can appear in them."
Papp Tímea, Papageno
"I am focusing on the sounds that can have dramaturgical layers, those that are connected to some sort of situation. When I am thinking in the structure of the piece, I am thinking in a performative arch rather then musical."
Várkonyi Zsolt, Librarius
"The performance resonates with the main ideas of buddhism. It offers a space and an action where there is no right or wrong answers, no hierarchy or everyday communication forms."
On Mandala, PestiEst
"I think many people are looking for situations where their energies can be focused and can be united with other's. (...) In any work that I make, it is very important for me to create a very human and reflective atmosphere."
Artmagazin
"I am aiming to create structure that can work by themeselves and to create complexity from simplicity. (...) I think restrictions can make a situation more focused and playful."
Ádám Lang, Urbanplayer.hu
IN ESSAYS
"The audience's attention is turned beyond seeing towards listening and bodily senses. The contrast of the slowed down, attentive perception and the hectic busy public space creates an exceptionally strong effect.”
Essay about walking performances in Hungary, Boróka Lipka, Dunszt magazine
"The concentric organisation of audience seats is provoking an exciting and slightly tense situation for the audience and I also start to observe the others: the smiling girl, who slightly theatrically arrives into the situation, the tall young man who is swaying his head left-right in his concentration. The inner and outter attention mixes then spreads around as a flock of birds, it is waveing up and down, in its own dynamics. The experience of attention becomes central as the events kineticaly spreads through us in circles.” Essay about Performativity of Sound, Zsuzsa Komjáthy, Színház Magazin
REVIEWS
Overheard
" I am sitting blindfolded on the main stage of Trafó House. (...) It feels cinematic, and if it is a cinema, then it is full 4D, as the artists made sure that 'Overheard' is creating a continous spatial immersion."
Orbán Krisztina, Kulter.hu
Drift
"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
Listening Club
"In Somló's piece, from the cacaphonie of contradictory sounds organically morphing into a symphony" Németh Fruzsina Lilla, Népszava
"The sound is expanding in the space, is becoming omnipresent, resonating from all places. Then, behind my closed eyes, the sound slowly materializes, gains its own matter, substance, volume. (...) Our sensation of space is changing, there are no walls or roof, we are floating in emptiness, far away from our everyday realities."
Viktória Beličáková, kapcsolj.be blog
"The concentric organisation of audience seats is provoking an exciting and slightly tense situation for the audience and I also start to observe the others: the smiling girl, who slightly theatrically arrives into the situation, the tall young man who is swaying his head left-right in his concentration. The inner and outter attention mixes then spreads around as a flock of birds, it is waveing up and down, in its own dynamics. The experience of attention becomes central as the events kineticaly spreads through us in circles.”
Essay about Performativity of Sound, Zsuzsa Komjáthy, Színház Magazin
Mandala
„From a personalized, introverted, meditative state the game quickly grows into a precisely framed, but highly enjoyable community performace. We can not only acknowledge the fulfillment of Homo Ludens, but we arrive to complex philosophical questions of obedience, fitting into a system and the problems of living with freedom.”
Csaba Králl, Élet és Irodalom
“The bleak space becomes subjective as everyone needs to project themeselves and to become the observer of their own rhyhtm, space and action. This in-between state is the feature of the rituals - here it is evoked with the tools of the theatre.(...) As in every good theatre the catarsis arrives here as well. At a given sign all of us have to meet in shared circle, where everyone almost automatically starts to connect. We share our sounds with each other, creating a collective sound installation till the last note fades away. “
Pálffy Zsófia, Tánckritika - on the abandoned factory version 'Kerengő'
“The simple restrictions/instructions open up an indulgence of complexity. A workshop in social relations. A microcosm would be the easiest one-word review. (...) The fundamental aspects of space and time are made and remade in Somló’s sensitive handling.”
Alexandra Baybutt, Bellyflop Magazine
“An eye-opening, stimulating night of theatre, one of the most innovative I have seen. (...) Dávid Somló’s production creates a stunning soundscape, allowing us to focus on the interactions.”
Rebecca Gwyther, A Young Theatre
"It’s a rare piece of participatory performance art."
Tabish Khan, FAD Magazine
Every sound is a thin blue line
"The whole space has the effect that we are in different dimension and sounds and noises are comming from a parallel reality. (...) Sometimes just barely noticable sounds are communicating in the sphere, other times powerful resonations are vibrating through the rooms."
Steven Loom, Kiállításmegnyitó blog
IITTHHOONN
"The performers/creators are leading the audience's attention with sounds, light and movement in a way that I even loose the details that are right next to me. Dávid are Imre are liberating the word 'home': a bedroom where one can climb around on the top of the furniture like a cat, there are no more obstacles, but maybe it is not even a bedroom anymore.”
Orbán Krisztina, Kulter
It comes it goes
"The main focus of the performance is playing with the perception and attention of the audience."
Králl Csaba, Élet és Irodalom
"The tense attention is sharpening our senses as we are trying to find symbolic meaning in the subtle changes."
Dézsi Fruzsina, Revizor
Animal City
"Animal City gives us what we need the most: feeling liberated by playing."
Győri-Drahos Martin, Pótszékfoglaló
"This performance is not about animals, it is about humans, as they try to see the beauty and nature of the world that surrounds them." Fehér Anna Magda, Szinhaz.net
The Space Is In Between Us
“Effortlessly in synch with each other, they bring both a reassuring and energising force to this work. Their strength lies in how they manage to direct whatever might happen in the space and for every night it will be different. “
Jo Leask, London Dance
The two artists in this pleasing performance succeed in giving ‘space exploration’ – a favourite topic of newspapers – a whole new meaning. I found it charming and thought provoking.”
Claire Cohen, Ballet Bichon blog
"The work’s title lightly evokes memory, obliquely, at a glance, as if trying to recall, via senses, something that was significant. Thus the expansive validity of some small things. Thus the richness of poetic resonance, with its expansive web-like structure of associations triggered by sense-forms.”
Lizzy Le Quesne, choreography.net (Offline)
MUSIC REVIEWS
Movement
“It’s very warm and has a nice experimental progression of parts all performed on a guitar, but done in original ways that are quite different than what you would expect when reading that it is the work of a guitarist.”
Mark X, Yeah I Know it Sucks
"Hungarian guitarist David Somló’s incredible debut album Movement is a dusty 27 minute recording that’s positively crackling with tense, nervous energy. (...) A ‘must have’ for all Hank Marvins."
Joe Murray, Radio Free Midwich