The first TRILATERAL Exchange got underway in Budapest, Hungary, November 22 to December 3, 2023.
Christina Gesualdi/Philadelphia and Silvia Cherneva/Sofia joined Tamara Zsòfia Vadas in her home city of Budapest for a residency of sharing their artistic practice with each other and the arts community, attended the dunaPart platform and explored Budapest culture, sites, and history.
TRILATERAL Dance Artists Exchange 2023-24
Christina Gesualdi is a Philadelphia-based dancer, choreographer, improviser, and yoga teacher. She has danced in projects of Annie Wilson, Zornitsa Stoyanova, Megan Bridge, Curt Haworth, and Nicole Bindler. Christina has shared her dance work in Philadelphia, Portland, Detroit, Asheville, and Poznan, Poland. All into the process soup goes: attending to sensation, gentleness, listening, failing/flailing, queering, patience, and indirectness. Christina is a past member of Mascher Space Cooperative and a new member at The Art Room Studio. Check out both of those spaces and the amazing artists that keep them both thriving! Christina’s recent improvisational performances have been in collaboration with sound artist Jesse Kudler. She also premiered a new group performance piece as part of the Cannonball Festival / Philly Fringe Festival this year entitled 2023 at the Icebox Project Space, in Philadelphia. She hopes to continue research and work on this process and piece.
Silvia Cherneva tries to maintain an air of mystery by combining different forms and genres so that none of them reveal what her real skills are. She graduated with a BA in Architecture from the University of Cambridge in 2016 and an MA in Contemporary Dance from the London Contemporary Dance School in 2020. In London, she created several short dance films. She worked extensively with dance practitioner and scholar Angela Andrew on performing, researching, and teaching in the genres of lindy hop and vernacular jazz dance.
Since 2020 Silvia has been living back in Bulgaria and enjoying space for creative exploration with wonderful collaborators. She has been a co-organizer, teacher, and artist at the award-winning Focus: Screendance program. She also co-organized and performed as part of PIC – Platform for Improvisation and Composition, and has been co-running the cultural program at Hod Movement Laboratory. She is working on a full-length documentary film and just recently in 2023 premiered her debut choreographic stage work called Critical Mass ( co-produced by Toplocentrala Center
for Contemporary Arts and supported by the National Fund “Culture”).
Tamara Zsófia Vadas, Budapest-based dance maker, performer, and choreographer studied choreography and pedagogy at the Budapest Contemporary Dance School and is a graduate of the Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy. Tamara has worked with choreographers such as Márta Ladjánszki, Gyula Berger, Adrienn Hód/Hodworks, and was a member of The Symptoms for three years. With the collective Csaba Molnár and Viktória Dányi she co-created the piece SKIN ME (2013) which was awarded the Rudolf Lábán Prize in 2014 and was shortlisted within the 20 Priority Companies of the 2014 Aerowaves Spring Forward Festival. She has participated at the iDANS Festival in Istanbul and Impulstanz Festival in Vienna among other venues and festivals. The recipient of numerous awards including the Viktor Fülöp state grant from the Ministry of Human Resources in Hungary for 2017. As a dance educator, she teaches creative movement for children, and improvisation and composition classes for teens and adults. She has been a guest teacher at the physical theatre director faculty of the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest.
TRILATERAL Dance Artist Exchange is made possible with support from the Trust For Mutual Understanding and organizational partners BodyMeld in Sofia, the Műhely Alapítvány/Workshop Foundation in Budapest, and Philadelphia Dance Projects.