Budapest
Liliom u.41
1094
Hungary
- Arts
employed: 21 people, budget yearly: 228 million HUF, Sources of funding: government, applications, ticket income. Modalities of action: projects, performances. Main partners involved in the organization's projects/activities: NKA, Temps d' Images
There is a tradition reaching back decades in Western Europe of erecting artistic centers and institutions in empty industrial buildings. The Trafó House of Contemporary Arts opened its doors in 1998 as the first of this kind in Hungary. Trafó is an institution, a building, a place, a medium, an intellectual adventure, a risk and a possibility. It is a house that belongs to the contemporary arts; a place where life speaks about dance, theater, visual arts, literature and music; a theater, which has no company, and where the viewer is equal with the created opportunity.Trafó is a place where emotion is allowed more space than usual alongside abstraction, a place through which we can look out into the world.
Trafó's programs pay particular attention to a variety of genres as well as to the demands of quality and internationality. The location for performance art programs is the Performing Hall. The branch of contemporary art least established in the Hungarian tradition is contemporary dance. In this area our most important tasks are to show aesthetic variety and differing dance languages. In addition to this we give special attention, from the perspective of the most recent dance history, to inviting significant works, companies, and performances. The only criteria in the selection of Hungarian and international programs, other than technical limitations, is quality. Budapest is a city with a great theatrical tradition. There are roughly 20 theatrical houses, the majority are repertory theaters, and a number of small studio theaters. The Trafó theatrical events are developed with this in mind. In arranging programs, the emphasis is primarily on going beyond the language of classical theater to renew it, to use the theater space and its assets in a refreshing way, to present performances with visuality in the foreground. Music is also represented in our program on a monthly basis; we arrange 1-2 monthly concerts and some festivals, special program-series each year, suchs as our contemporary music festival called Making New Waves or the Indian Classical Music concert-series, where we present the most important masters of traditional Indian music. At Trafó we often add unspecified genres and interdisciplinary programs to our overall repetiore in addition to staging literary-inspired programs and film or multimedia events. Current trends and phenomena in progressive contemporary arts are shown in the Trafó Gallery.
The goal is to widen our international relations.