SÍN is a 1600 m2 cultural center that supports young talents by providing them with a place to rehearse and produce their performances at.
However, they have recently expanded their portfolio, having announced an upcoming contemporary dance festival in the institute. We caught up with manager director Tamás Lóky to find out what’s going on.
You have several dance theater performances lined up in April and May. Are these only occasional site-specific performances or have you founded a theatre in secret?
SÍN essentially serves as a production house, in other words, performances are made in the cultural center but they premiere elsewhere. However, thanks to some recent improvements, especially concerning the technical background, it’s become possible for us to put up performances at SÍN, that is, open the institute to the public. We’ll bring them, for example, the artists who have already visited SÍN in context of previous Gesture Festivals.
Despite the large number of theaters and dance ensembles in Budapest, there are not that many institutes that house dance performances. What you have on offer seems quality stuff but why is the repertoire so narrow?
I could say that we intentionally started cautiously, because, as I usually put it, “playing theater” in a place that is relatively unknown to the general public is risky and it takes time for people to get used to it. However, we have another reason: we don’t want to run a theater at the expense of our successful production house. Also, we have artistic quality among our criteria when we put together our schedule.
SÍN Cultural Center
1139 Budapest, Gyutacs utca 10-18. www.sinarts.org