Critical distances: Europe, seen from its East

Being an Eastern European dance critic can come with its own challenges too. After decades of isolation and censorship, that optimist era starting from the late 1980s was an age of discovery and development for the Hungarian dance scene. But still: many important international artists and companies hardly got to this part of the continent, if ever. If I wanted to see them, I had to travel – quite often, and quite far. Digitisation helps, but when it comes to the performing arts, the live experience can never fully be substituted with recordings. For me and my colleagues, just staying in the loop requires much more effort than for those living closer to the dance hotspots of Western Europe.

Then there are the differences in the cultural discourse – and the projection of those differences. To take just one example, a Hungarian choreographer once told me that during a post-show talk in Germany, she was questioned why her cast wasn’t more racially diverse and why it didn’t include any people of colour. She froze and felt rather ashamed (inferiority complex, remember?), when a first answer could have been this simple: Hungary, even in its main cities, is much less racially diverse than Germany. The causes and consequences of this, in Germany as well as in Hungary, could then have been explored with more openness and nuance.

From a Western point of view, we are sometimes considered ignorant, but the truth is that our hot topics simply lie elsewhere, and more often than not they revolve around the ongoing, deepening existential crisis of our dance scene, and in a broader sense, of our whole country. But see what I’m doing again? Explaining myself, like the inadequate little sister.

Yet I have also learned that being an Eastern European can come with a sense of pride. Ironically I found this out when I became a part of a Europe-wide community of dance writers: Springback Academy. While I managed to connect with each and every member of the network from the very first moment, there has always been an extra layer of camaraderie with my colleagues from Eastern Europe, whether from Bulgaria, Poland, Croatia, Russia or Romania. There’s a real sense of understanding between us over our shared history and familiar challenges. Thankfully, my Western European colleagues (the luckier siblings in the family called Europe) have always approached me with openness and curiosity. Looking at my own country through their eyes made me realise that this half of the continent is not necessarily worse, it’s only different. For the first time in my life, I felt good about being Eastern European, and for that I will forever be grateful. ●