Dancer, teacher and choreographer, Emese Cuhorka graduated from the Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy. She has worked with Adrienn Hód since 2007 and has been a member of Hodworks since 2009. Together with Csaba Molnár, she develops artistic recontextualisations of subcultures. She is interested in experimenting with forms and performance formats. As a performer and co-creator, she has participated in six works which have received the Rudolf Lábán Award. The piece Sea Lavender was awarded the Special Prize by the Hungarian Theatre Critics. The documentary about the rehearsals of this piece, titled The Euphoria of Being, won the Main Prize at the Locarno Film Festival and the Human Rights Prize at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
Unfolding through a series of vignettes – borrowing inspiration from the philosophy of Bauhaus and the Triadic Ballet – Masterwork for Six Dancers (2023) explores the ways in which the body sheds cultural symbols and societal meanings projected upon it over time. By using objects as costumes that impede movement and give it a mechanical tinge, the body reshapes its autonomy in a flurry of functional obstacles. Its functions slip between the concrete and the abstract into choreography. Each and every body is a masterpiece in its own right, emerging from the entanglement of the self and the environment. By modifying the body, by “objectifying” it and extending it into space and surroundings, by submitting and submerging the body, a paradoxical freedom and autonomy emerge – that of art and artifice.