Viktor Szeri
Creative Crossroads Cycle Two 2025–2026
Viktor Szeri (born 1993) is an independent performer and choreographer based in Budapest. In his multidisciplinary pieces, the interplay of different (performing) art forms and visual solutions can be observed. His spontaneous and improvisational creative processes are usually motivated by a desire to express a mood or a feeling. Yet, dance always plays a crucial role in his work: for him, it is a language through which the imperfect, transient and vulnerable human body can break free of the constraints of social norms. His performances are visceral: blurring the boundaries between the stage and the auditorium, they invite us into intimate realities where the audience has an active role. The ideology and complexity of conventional art spaces, such as theatres and galleries, are as much a source of interest as the potential in public spaces, off-sites, and abandoned buildings.
He always looks for new solutions, often in collaborations. In 2018, he founded the artist group Hollow with Tamás Páll and Gyula Muskovics, with whom he has worked regularly ever since. In their immersive installations and performances choreography and dance are combined with poetry, new media art, and role-playing to create "world prototypes" where the dominant systems of consensual reality can be questioned or modified.
He received a BA in Choreography at the Budapest Contemporary Dance School, and an MA in Media Design at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest. Recently, he has been awarded several scholarships and residencies in Budapest, Prague, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Istanbul, Warsaw, Tbilisi, and Minsk. His individual works and collaborations have been presented in Budapest at Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, MU Theatre, DunaPart - Platform for Contemporary Performing Arts, art quarter budapest, Studio of Young Artists' Association, Placcc Dance, as well as MeetFactory (Prague), Y Events, Divadlo X10 (Prague), House of Arts (Brno), Donaufestival (Krems), Art Cologne (Cologne), Montag Modus (Berlin), radialsystem (Berlin), and Open Space - Centre for Visual and Performing Arts (Tbilisi).
His piece Fatigue was awarded the Rudolf Lábán Prize for the best contemporary dance performance in 2022.
Since 2020, he has been the main organizer of the Under500 interdisciplinary performing arts festival in Budapest Festival.
Find more about Viktor Szeri on his website.
I Quit Ordinary Dancing
Performance
Spontaneous street scenes, bodies moving intuitively to music, and the sometimes destructive forms of joy inspire Viktor Szeri’s piece: I Quit Ordinary Dancing.
While maximizing pleasure and hedonism associated with dance, Szeri draws from reality. The source of pleasure, however, is not in the beauty of the movements or the linearity of the story. By abandoning their comfort, both the artist and the audience work toward catharsis.
Through the themes of having fun and entertainment, and by questioning their own role, Szeri explores what art can offer beyond cultural consumption. With disturbing, slowly undulating scenes, Szeri also highlights that while dance is an elemental part of life, the act of creation can be isolating for artists, separating them from others. Instead of entertaining, the aim is to foster immersion, from which dance unfolds as a sensual experience.
I Quit Ordinary Dancing
by Viktor Szeri
7 March 2025, 20:00
Nextfeszt Trafo Budapest
Find details & tickets here.
Fatigue
Performance
Mood swings, slowed reflexes, dizziness: the various physical and psychological symptoms of burnout infiltrate unnoticed into everyday life. What can an artist do with this enervated state in a world where work makes existence tangible? In this climate, it can seem as if continuous production, the accumulation of projects, is the key to satisfaction, while all this points the way to burnout.
In his solo, Viktor Szeri does not hide his apathy, but draws on his personal experiences and builds his choreography on fatigue, on wanting nothing. He explores the creative process, the limits and tolerance of his own body through the filter of burnout, while also experimenting with how the audience can relate to this sedated vision.
Fatigue was awarded the Rudolf Lábán Prize for the best contemporary dance performance in 2022.
23 May 2025
SPRING Festival Utrecht (NL)
–> Find details and tickets here.
31 May 2025,
Trafo House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest (HU)
–> Find details and tickets here.
11–12 July 2025
Julidans, Amsterdam (NL)
–> find details and tickets here.
Aura
Performance
Hollow embodies the shared hallucinations of choreographer Viktor Szeri, game designer/media artist Tamás Páll and curator Gyula Muskovics. The three artists have been creating immersive performances, experiences and installations in theaters and galleries in Budapest and other European cities since 2018.
In Aura, they examine the relationship between theater and reality, as well as the world-making potential of imagination. The performance also raises the question of what emerges in a group beyond the sum of its members. Similarly to Hollow’s previous works, the audience will not remain outsiders: This time they will be immersed in an imaginary journey, the story, the landscapes and the characters of which are evoked through poetics, media art, contemporary dance, role-playing, experimental electronic music and singing.
The starting point for the performance was an international research, in which the three artists investigated the functioning and world-building strategies of grassroots communities in Eastern Europe. During the intuitive and experience-based research process, they also experimented with the creation of a collective body and shared consciousness, through which they also aimed to reinterpret the functioning of their own group.
29–30 MAy 2025
Trafo House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest (HU)
–> Find Details and Ticktes here.