Workshop/audition to find dancers for Júlia Vavra performance

From August 21-24th at  10 am to 2 pm we will host a workshop/audition by Hungarian new generation choreographer Júlia Vavra with the aim of finding dancers for her new performance produced by STL. The aim of the workshop is to enable participants to get acquainted with Júlia’s creative and working practice and, if mutually compatible, to proceed to the stage of creating the performance. The working period of the performance will be spring 2026 and the premiere is in April 2026 at Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava (STL).

Register to the workshop until the 10th of August

Júlia Vavra is a Budapest-based freelance contemporary dancer, performer and choreographer. She studied at the Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy (2010-2015) and at the School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam University of the Arts (2017-2021, as a choreographer). 

At the moment, she is based and active in the Hungarian freelancer art community.

Júlia describes her practise:

My interests are constantly changing,  depending on the context and people who I am working with. I am trying to avoid “boxing myself “ by settling with one specific direction or aesthetic.

I like to think about bodies as mysterious, never fully understood, information carriers. I trust movement, physicality and a creation process has transformative power. I like to think about creating something as a way of reconstructing ruling structures.

I am fired up by contradictions and tabus. I like to play with character building, re-contextualised symbols, twisted codes, irony and humor as tools to make us reflect on our implicit rules, ethics, behaviours and patterns. I am interested in the motion of activating decentralised territories, off-spaces, hidden and unseen segments within the world of the theatre. I am invested in building atmospheres which you can “bite”, through the combination of movement, lights, visuals and sound. I am into dancing, good music, magic and good food. I am drawn to being adventurous, try out different things, change my mind at the last minute and not take art too seriously. 

Working with people I try to continuously check in and communicate transparently throughout processes. I do like to use and trust my intuition in creation processes. I am busy finding balance between “brainy”/intellectual and intuitive decision making.

Recently engaged with and might appear on the workshop:

• These days I am falling back to the pleasure, simplicity and joy of dancing to music I like. On these few days we will do that through longer structured improvisations. I am curious to take time and let ourselves arrive into states and places through physicality and repetition.
• Recently I have been busy with Hungarian folk dances. For me, it is important to immerse myself in and reflect on the values and distortions of our traditions and folk culture which dates back centuries as a communal art form. The musical, rhythmical, physical and dynamic side of it is something which I am really close to.
• At the moment, I am engaged with character building through the simplicity of tensioning and releasing different body parts and observing what memories, references those postures bring into the space. We will look at how different archetypes and characters can appear through the slow and continuous change of those qualities.
• Recently I am fascinated by story telling, narrative building through the format of a distorted musical.
• I am interested in the power play between audience and performer. I always find performative situations captivating from both sides. I like to play with the tension in between those roles. We will work with the following questions: Where is my attention as a performer or a viewer? How much control do you have as a performer? How can an empowered state so easily tip over into a vulnerable situation? What is the role and power of a gaze  and distance in a performative situation? How can you use or ignore  the attention of someone? 
• These days I am involved in making simple and enjoyable fixed choreographies/dances. We will create some of those together.
• We will work with the alternation, combinations, and contradictions of grandiose/ theatrical, simple, raw, enervated and intimate qualities.