The city of open wounds

During the day, we discussed translations of dance interpretations and cultural policy, and in the evenings we attended dance performances as part of the Springback Assembly (a meeting of dance writers who have networked through the European Springback Magazine). I left Budapest with a heavy heart. Everyone I spoke to reported drastic cuts in funding and burnout due to working in an untenable environment. Despite all the idealism, there was a deep sense of hopelessness in the face of the changes under the current political regime.

Their pessimism soon proved well-founded. As early as December 2024, Lena Megyeri informed the group of writers that Színház, a theater and dance magazine that had published continuously since 1968, would receive no state funding for 2025. Financial support for the publication had been reduced over the years from €40,500 in 2013 to just €5,100 in 2024, and now it was to receive nothing.

As Noémi Herczog described in her article in The IATC journal/Revue de l’AICT in December 2024, the independent Hungarian performing arts are being financially censored and politically marginalized, even as they strive to find new artistic solutions. The Hungarian form of censorship in 2025 is seeing generous state spending on culture and performing arts in Hungary while many groups, artists, and institutions with a long tradition are deprived completely of funding for political reasons.

She tells me that there is currently a group of young people trying to take over Színház to keep it alive. The problem is that their entire budget is based on funding independent of the Hungarian state, largely from abroad—and now the new so-called ‘sovereignty bill’ can be used against any media receiving foreign money. “The text of the law is so broad that you never know who they will target,” she claims. Since our conversation, the Hungarian Parliament has put the vote on the ‘sovereignty bill’ on hold pending resubmission.

The background: In May 2025, the Budapest Business Journal reported on a bill banning non-governmental organizations from accepting foreign funding, while the Committee to Protect Journalists described Prime Minister Orbán’s ‘spring cleaning’ campaign against what he terms a ‘shadow army’ of critics.

The International Press Institute warned that the bill represented “an unprecedented attack on the country’s still-independent institutions” and noted that Hungary has already built the EU’s most advanced system of media capture—a combination of public media control, regulatory bias, and intimidation of critical voices.

Herczog describes how intimidation spreads even before any punishment is applied: “Just mentioning the bill is enough to frighten people,” she says. “The self-censorship reflex is very strong in Hungary.” The past and present of self-censorship in Hungarian theater is a theme she explored in depth in her interview with Svante Aulis Löwenborg in Norsk Shakespearetidsskrift 2023.

Choreographer and performer gergő d. farkas, who now divides their time between Vienna, Stockholm, and Budapest, explains how applications for state funding themselves enforce self-censorship:

“I was advised not to write the word ‘queering’ in the project application.” Alongside many other dance makers, gergő d. farkas relies on municipal funds from Budapest and Creative Europe projects to continue. “Budapest protects some venues for now,” they add, “but many independent companies are at risk of being shut down.”

Dance writer and cultural manager Lena Megyeri noted, “The venues are in a really bad situation… basically, it’s down to Trafó House and Mu Theater.” She tells me that Mu Theater isn’t able to commission works anymore—it just presents what it can. “As a critic, I can hardly find anything to see,” she said, referring to the steep drop in new productions. “The amount of shows [has] dropped drastically.”

In addition, Megyeri tells me that two summer festivals that have regularly been presenting contemporary dance, the Bánkitó Festival and the Kolorádó Fesztival, announced in June that this year’s edition will be their last.

Even though these cuts are drastic and the changes may seem sudden, György Szabó, former director of Trafó House, has been observing the pattern for decades. For a fully immersive overview of the last 40 years of independent dance in Hungary, I can thoroughly recommend reading Szabó’s article, The Process of Freedom, published by Színház Magazine in June 2024.

Szabó explains that “after 2010, the government ground the opposition down,” and although contemporary dance fell outside the immediate sphere of political interest, giving artists a certain degree of freedom, that freedom, he says, “quickly turned dangerous for the field.”

Without clear political backing, conservative institutions such as the National Theater were now able to step in, secure public funding, and gradually marginalize other forms of free dance.

“What Fidesz did was appoint the artistic directors of the theater and control the theater with loyalists who know what they can do and what they cannot,” Szabó says.

The 2019 ‘theater law’ bill proposed by the government threatened to go even further, giving the Ministry of Human Resources the right to approve theater directors, their productions, and the budgets of publicly funded theaters. Protests erupted, with thousands of artists and citizens marching through Budapest, calling the law an attack on freedom of artistic expression.

That’s what they want: Archiving the past

Dance archivist Tamás Halász currently works at the Hungarian Theater Museum and Institute. He is a former dance critic and has been an influential voice in Hungary’s contemporary dance landscape for more than three decades. Through his work, Halász has witnessed the Hungarian dance ecosystem transform into an atmosphere of shrinking resources, political pressure, and emigration.

Halász has long witnessed the slow strangulation of Hungary’s independent cultural scene—not always through blunt force, but through what he calls the ‘refined tricks’ of the Fidesz system:

“There are financial sources that are gone or drying up, reduced budgets, the starving out of artists and communities, and subtle manipulations of ownership or institutional background,” he explains. “Most artists lost their access to public funding and decided to stop or reduce their activity—like Tünet Együttes [The Symptoms], led by Réka Szabó.”

While there are still some signs of life, Halász notes they are increasingly faint: “Fewer performances, fewer premieres, fewer festivals, fewer workshops.”

The closures of independent publications have followed a similar pattern: “Yes, there were economic reasons, as is the case everywhere. But political pressure made the fall much faster and harder.”

He recalls the politically engineered shuttering of the leftist daily Népszabadság—“a success for the Fidesz ‘masterminds’,” he observes bitterly—and how it echoed across the cultural press. Printed versions of theater magazines like Színház, Ellenfény, and the interdisciplinary journal Parallel (where Halász once served as editor-in-chief) all folded or shrank.

The damage runs deeper than institutional collapse.

“Over the past 15 years, at least half a million people have left Hungary. Among them are thousands from the cultural sector.”

(Tamás Halász)

He compares the present moment to Hungary’s interwar period, when thousands fled a nationalist and antisemitic climate exacerbated by the Numerus Clausus and other repressive laws. “Once again,” he warns, “anyone can end up in a very difficult situation for political reasons.”

Yet he stays. “I’ve decided not to be a coward. I’ve had no problem with my views yet—and I hope that won’t change over the coming months until, hopefully, the end of the regime.”

Meanwhile, Halász continues his work, through which he supports high standards of critical thinking and writing, mentorship, and documentation—and welcomes the next generation of artists to study the dance archive. He is hopeful for political change that will see artists returning to the country and the scene reassembling.

Attempts to silence artists and writers

Currently, when someone dares to stand up against the strict—though largely unspoken—rules, they are swiftly punished by government-loyal media, which deploy smear campaigns as a weapon. The Hungarian Sovereignty Protection Office, created in late 2023, has been orchestrating such attacks against independent journalists including Szabolcs Vörös of Válasz Online, who in May 2025 became a target less than 24 hours after interviewing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky (who is critical of Orbán).

Hungary’s shrinking civic space is no longer a new story. As far back as 2018, Swedish journalist Joakim Medin documented these patterns in his book Orbánistan, while think tanks like the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and Freedom House have described Hungary as a “hybrid regime” where democratic institutions have systematically been dismantled.

Can the dance world somehow escape this toxic climate? Hardly.

Several choreographers report having been targeted by social media smear campaigns—especially those challenging conservative norms. In addition, the entrenched hierarchies within the performing arts are inescapable.

Respected independent choreographer and co-founder of the L1 Association (a nonprofit supporting contemporary dance and movement-based practices in Hungary since 2002) Márta Ladjánszki elaborates:

“Before we start fantasizing about what would be good for the independent sector in connection with a new change in government and hopefully cultural policy; it would also be time to think about how we can eliminate, override, and transform the hierarchical systems within the theater as a profession between the representatives of the individual theater fields. Because let’s be honest (and this is not only the case in Hungary): Dance is inferior to verbal theatre; contemporary dance is inferior to modern ballet and folk dance. An artist with a professional qualification and, so to speak, a piece of paper is always worth more than a self-made one who, in a given case, has more experience and, due to their position, has to find even the smallest ingredients necessary for creation.”

Ladjánszki, who in addition to the L1 Association previously led the now-closed L1danceFest—a vital platform for international and local independent dance for two decades—is known for her bold, boundary-pushing work exploring nudity and collective participation. She has consistently advocated for solidarity, fair funding, and visibility for the independent arts. Despite repeated setbacks, she continues to champion community-based, inclusive initiatives and supports younger generations of dance artists in Budapest.

She underscores the urgency of solidarity:

“We must listen to each other’s challenges,” Ladjánszki insists, “because we are talking about creators, teachers, dancers, community workers who help others but don’t have enough money to survive.” Ladjánszki has been contending with these obstacles for thirty years.

“Lack of funding acts as a form of censorship. It may not be explicit, but its effects are undeniable.” says Márta Ladjánszki.

She described how nudity, for example, has increasingly been suppressed—even when she created a naturist piece where audience members themselves were invited to be naked.

“It was a brand-new territory, an honest way to be together,” she explained. But the work was essentially blacklisted, and broadcasters later asked her not to discuss it. “The right-wing, conservative atmosphere made it impossible to even [acknowledge the existence of] this kind of work.”

Adrienn Hód’s work revolves around movement, form, and the body in all its diversity. She explores questions of inclusion, professional boundaries, and the potential of contemporary dance: Who gets to be on stage? What defines professionalism? How do we describe the limits of the art form, and how does it affect the audience?

She is particularly drawn to the embodied knowledge of dancers and teachers, and how this knowledge can be used: “…to support or heal, to reflect, to care—to use ourselves, our own movement, as a kind of self-reflection or healing tool.”

And for her, some questions remain unanswered:

“What does it mean, in this moment, that the body is seen as something problematic—not natural?”

(Adrienn Hód)

Réka Szabó, a leading voice in independent Hungarian dance, put it bluntly: “If you don’t get state support, you are faced with the impossible, or close to it.” After running her internationally acclaimed company The Symptoms for nearly two decades, she hibernated it two years ago because she was exhausted by the prospect of diminishing and unpredictable funding and the impossibility of long-term planning. Her artistic work was consumed by the constant struggle for survival.

“There hasn’t been any perspective for a while now,” she told me. “One cannot plan, funding is extremely uncertain, and demoralisation characterises the independent professional scene all around, artists, critics, venues and festivals included.

For Szabó, the grief was compounded by the sense of passivity in the community. “Some of us grew up in communism,” she said. “We never really learned how to be democratic, and as a result we have no tradition in speaking up for ourselves as a community.”

But Szabó is not giving up: since January 2025, she has been meeting regularly with a small group, an initiative started by György Szabó, to brainstorm about a new strategy and a new shared platform for the independent scene.

“It’s very inspiring to come together, think together, and be constructive together,” she explained. “We have so many ideas that don’t even need money.”

In a political atmosphere increasingly defined by scapegoating and nationalism, Budapest’s independent dance artists continue to struggle for the freedom to create—and to hold onto their own sense of movement, in every sense of the word.

Who’s free to express themselves?

Noémi Herczog describes how the sphere of criticism is also collapsing under this pressure:
“Many reviews are basically paid for by the theaters themselves. Of course, opinions are free. But theaters pay for interviews and reviews, and the press is dependent on their money, which naturally changes the content of the newspapers. Editorial offices are less free in their decisions. Theaters that can pay become even more visible, while those that don’t pay remain completely invisible.”

Támas Halász brings my attention to how so-called critical writing has become less relevant. “As a critic, I used to see my role as a conductor of attention.” But with all the obstacles created by the current regime, it’s nearly impossible to keep the practice of art critique alive.

“We see a loss of critical writing. There are fewer places to publish, fewer people to review, and less continuity. [Critique] has become, in some ways, boring—that is a tragedy, not a choice.”

However, Halász has brought his work ethic with him into his current role as a dance archivist. “If criticism fails, archives must keep the memory alive.”

Réka Szabó confirms how Fidesz often uses fear as a strategy to keep artists in check, “This is the biggest problem with authoritarian governments having control over funding for the arts: you can’t criticize them and at the same time expect money from them. It’s impossible.”

György Szabó describes how polarization has shaped audience behavior in Hungary. On one hand, he sees conservative groups who reject liberal or progressive art and prefer clear leadership and traditional values. A second segment of the public, he suggests, avoids taking sides altogether and makes cultural choices more pragmatically, based on personal interest rather than ideology. Finally, he identifies a third group committed to democratic values and artistic freedom, but notes that this group remains a minority.

Lena Megyeri expresses a similar observation: “There’s a small, very faithful audience who still follow the artists,” Megyeri reflects, “but they’re getting fewer and fewer.”

When asked about which publications are left to write for, she tells me there is currently only one publication still focusing on dance exclusively: Tánckritika. In addition, there is Revizor, a cultural site that writes about dance among other art forms. Due to cuts in their funding, they stay afloat with the help of subscriptions, ads, and paid articles and reviews commissioned by the theaters.

Megyeri notes that many dancers are acutely aware of the situation, and that some are taking the matter of low visibility into their own hands: In the podcast Felwilágosítunk, hosted by artistic director of Willany Leo impro dance theater Zoltán Grecsó, dancers from the independent scene are interviewed about their careers and given space to discuss the problems facing the field as well as possible solutions, ideas, and practices.

Huge crowds in support of Pride spark hope

The Fidesz party’s rhetoric of defending “family values” includes a striking caveat: Those who identify as LGBTQI+ are not included.

This exclusion echoes the Trump era backlash against equality and diversity—while Trump, for his part, seems to be taking lessons straight from Orbán’s playbook.

This raises uncomfortable questions about whether a society that systematically excludes certain family constellations can call itself a democracy.

To paraphrase George Orwell: “some families are more equal than others”—especially when they are the families in power, shielding their own wealth while deciding which other families count at all.

On June 20th, 2025, Human Rights Watch reported that Hungarian police had banned LGBTQI+ Hungarians and their allies from assembling peacefully to celebrate Pride, while at the same time permitting a hate group to march on the very same day.

gergő d. farkas puts it bluntly: “They [the government] basically merged LGBTQIA+ with pedophile offenders and called it child protection. It’s really, really fucked up.”

Human Rights Watch explained how new draconian legal reforms underpinned these efforts to block Pride and other LGBTQI+ events, including constitutional changes in April justified under the banner of “child protection,” as well as amendments to the Assembly Act in March restricting the right to protest.

Farkas beschreibt die sich wandelnden Gesetze Ungarns als „populistische Instrumente“, die gegen queere Gemeinschaften eingesetzt werden. „Bereits 2021 gingen sie gegen Trans-Personen. Jetzt haben sie einen Gesetzentwurf verabschiedet, der jede ‘Ideologie’ gegen traditionelle Familienstrukturen verbietet. Das schadet nicht nur den Rechten von LGBTQIA+-Personen, sondern auch dem Menschenrecht auf Versammlungsfreiheit.“

Despite these threats, the choreographer remains clear-eyed: “There isn’t that much left they can take away from us” gergő d. farkas’ response has been world-building through choreography, and they express the resistance being linked to physical movement itself:

“The body is the last place anyone can take away from someone.”

(gergő d. farkas)

Recent events have brightened the horizon. A striking act of resistance unfolded on June 28th, 2025, when record-breaking crowds of up to 200,000 took to the streets to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Budapest Pride.

Defying the government’s warnings—or perhaps galvanized by them—this year’s Pride became a powerful statement of human rights and solidarity.

As expected, government-aligned media were quick to denounce the event, echoing Fidesz politicians who labelled the march a “festival of perversity with no connection to freedom of assembly.” “Chaos at Budapest Pride” proclaimed the pro-government publication Magyar Nemzet.

Despite government-controlled headlines, images from the parade told a different story: one of color, joy, and defiance in the streets. According to the BBC, more than 200,000 people gathered peacefully to celebrate diversity and love:

“We don’t exactly look as though we were banned!” declared a beaming Budapest mayor, Gergely Karácsony, speaking to the crowd in front of the Budapest Technical University.

City Hall, chronically underfunded and in constant conflict with the national government, had nonetheless dared to host the event—and won, at least for now.

“In fact, we look like we’re peacefully and freely putting on a big, fat show for a puffed-up and hateful power. The message is clear: They have no power over us,” Karácsony added.

How Fidesz will respond next remains to be seen. But Budapest has sent a strong message to the world.

Among the allies present was Finnish MEP Li Andersson, who argued that the government’s invocation of family values was merely a pretext to silence dissent. Her message to the BBC and the world is clear:

“It’s important to emphasize that the reason why we are here is not only Pride – this is about the fundamental rights of all of us.”

(Li Andersson)

Támas Halász calls this year’s Pride “a life sign,” noting how unexpectedly large the crowd was—“I really believe in surprises,” he says, clearly relieved and inspired, “No one expected this.”

As crowds start to gather in protest against authoritarian laws, other initiatives are also growing. Small festivals continue to carve out spaces for community and experimentation, challenging the government’s tightening grip on Hungary’s independent culture.

The Under500 Festival, founded by choreographers Viktor Szeri and Adrienn Hód, supports contemporary dance in a way that sidesteps state structures entirely. U500 is a completely idealistic grassroots initiative, which operates transparently, shares revenue with artists, and relies on volunteers and word-of-mouth to build audiences.

As Szeri told Nora Balkanyi in a feature for Hungarian Independent Voices: “You don’t need a lot of money to participate. For two days, we really feel that we are still here as a community.”

Whether such optimism can endure in Hungary’s current climate remains an open question?

Why do authoritarian regimes fear artists and journalists?

As early as 2021, Deutsche Welle reported on Orbán’s tightening grip on press freedom and pluralism, with state-owned broadcasters increasingly acting as government mouthpieces while independent outlets faced closure or takeover. In 2022, NPR reported how Orbán’s Christian nationalist agenda created an “existential crisis” for artists and cultural institutions, as state power and political pressure forced widespread self-censorship.

By May 2025, EUobserver was highlighting the shrinking space for independent journalism in Hungary: Hungary has fallen sharply on the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, ranking 67th in 2024 compared to 40th place a decade ago. Journalists describe growing isolation, hostility from government circles, and systematic exclusion from official channels.

“At first, the government was less and less cooperative with the independent press, but in recent years its attitude has become increasingly hostile,” Márton Kárpáti told EUobserver, referring to legislative moves against foreign-funded outlets.

Kárpáti ist Gründer von Telex.hu (einer Nachrichtenagentur, die von neunzig Journalist*innen gegründet wurde, die unter Druck von Index.hu zurückgetreten waren) und verweist auf legislative Maßnahmen gegen ausländisch finanzierte Medien.

He continues to describe how independent journalists now face systematic exclusion and growing isolation. Prime Minister Orbán, he notes, routinely evades critical questions, dismissing them as “fake news”—a tactic reminiscent of Donald Trump.

Indeed, there are striking parallels between Orbán and Trump, as explored by Ezra Klein on his New York Times podcast in the episode “Is Trump losing? A debate ” in which he, together with Zack Beauchamp and Andrew Marantz analyzed how both leaders erode democratic safeguards while building powerful propaganda machines.

The concentration of cultural and economic power in Hungary follows a familiar pattern of authoritarian populist systems. Just as Trump’s family leveraged political status to expand their business empire, Viktor Orbán’s son-in-law István Tiborcz has become one of Hungary’s wealthiest figures, amassing luxury properties, logistics firms, and financial ventures. Tiborcz and his wife, Ráhel Orbán, publicly claim their success is free of political influence, but investigative reporting has suggested otherwise.

In February 2025, Direkt36 released The Dynasty (“A Dinasztia”), a documentary scrutinizing this family wealth, including hidden-camera footage from Tiborcz’s exclusive BOTANIQ Budai Klub, where staff appeared to reveal illegal gambling among elite members.

Direkt36 describes itself as a non-profit investigative journalism center in Hungary, its mission to expose wrongdoings and abuse of power through fair but tough reporting—a kind of journalism that is vital for any democracy.

The film drew fierce political attacks even before its premiere, with the pro-government Magyar Nemzet accusing it of being a “Ukrainian secret service operation”—allegations that Direkt36 strongly denied.

Thanks to meticulous sourcing, no factual errors were successfully challenged, and at the time of writing, the documentary has gathered over 3.8 million YouTube views in a country of 9.5 million.

Direkt36 has seen public support surge, with membership contributions up roughly 40 percent.

Not surprisingly, Orbán’s government responded with intimidation: In a February interview, the Prime Minister suggested sanctions against civil organizations accepting foreign funding to influence politics—a thinly veiled threat aimed at investigative journalists.

Speaking to EUobserver, Márton Kárpáti remains hopeful: “We can see and feel that the audience likes and needs our work. We will never give up.”

And as 24.hu senior editor Zsolt Kerner reflected: “Good journalism has a longer lifespan than governments.” The same might be said of dance—even if the hope for change is balancing on a knife’s edge.

In a democratic, free society, there must be space for commentary, critique, resistance—and creation. When that resistance to dominant norms is lost, societies risk becoming trapped in a chamber that merely echoes the voices and wishes of the powerful.

In the same way that protesters, journalists, and filmmakers refuse to stay silent, the role of dance—of live, embodied practice—is to break silence with movement. It is the artist’s responsibility, and art’s very nature, not to fit in: to think beyond the familiar, to question how we experience the world.

As philosophers Deleuze and Guattari wrote in What is Philosophy? (1996): “We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.” And, added by Deleuze in 2006: “Art necessarily produces the unexpected, the unrecognizable and the unacceptable.”

In September 2025, a group of artists led by György Szabó will put a concrete proposal on the tables of politicians. With 2026 as an election year, there are fragile hopes for change. Perhaps we will see a new wave of choreography in Budapest, rooted in the creativity that has persisted against all odds.

György Szabó is convinced that the only way to resist an authoritarian takeover of the arts is unity: “The most important thing is togetherness,” he emphasizes, offering a final word of advice to both current and future independent dance scenes that may face growing authoritarianism in their own countries.

“You must unify from the beginning. If the resistance is sliced up, it will fail.”

(György Szabó)

The fight for freedom—and for art—continues. Because if there is to be resistance to the present—to the hollowing out of democracy, to the silencing of critical voices, to the erasure of difference—art must continue to challenge, question, and provoke.

Where there’s movement, there is still resistance.