Tamás Juronics was born on 5 February 1969 in Tata, Hungary. He graduated in 1987 from the Folk Dance Department of the Állami Balettintézet (State Ballet Institute, now the Hungarian Dance Academy). In the same year, at the invitation of Roland Bokor and Zoltán Imre, he joined the Szeged Ballet, where he rapidly evolved into a distinctive soloist and a choreographer with an original artistic vision. From 1989 onwards he performed leading roles, and from 1990 he began creating his own choreographic works.
Imre Zoltán regarded it as essential that his young dancers, who came from diverse training backgrounds, should acquire modern techniques and contemporary movement vocabularies (including Graham and Limón) alongside their classical training. To this end, he organised courses and invited guest teachers and choreographers. Several leading European contemporary choreographers – among them Matthew Hawkins, Jorma Uotinen and Roberto Galván – worked with the company, exerting a significant influence on Tamás Juronics’s later oeuvre, artistic outlook and the development of his own movement system. Imre Zoltán encouraged and supported the independent explorations of his young, talented dancers, and in 1990 Tamás Juronics and András Pataki established the Studio within the Szeged Ballet. This initiative provided members of the ensemble with opportunities for experimentation, independent creative work, and the production of their own pieces. Soon afterwards, the twenty-one-year-old Juronics created his first independent choreography, an eight-minute étude entitled Szükségi táncok (Necessary Dances), which was quickly followed by others. In the autumn of 1990, the Szeged Ballet presented three one-act dance works at the Budai Vigadó. Alongside Imre Zoltán’s Angyali táncjáték (Angelic Dance Play), two of the works – Szükségi táncok (Necessary Dances) and Szatíra (Satire) – were choreographed by Tamás Juronics. Contemporary critic Ágnes Gelencsér praised the emerging choreographer’s first opus in the following terms: “The debuting young dance-maker – who is, incidentally, one of the company’s finest performers – Tamás Juronics, presented two works. One of them has already turned out exceptionally well. Under the title Necessary Dances, he created a parody of folk dance, perceptively identifying and applying the mannerisms of amateur folk-dance choreography and the dancers’ ‘gaffes’, which are always magnified by feverish enthusiasm. Juronics has excellent humour and an excellent sense of style. His folk dance reimagined through modern-dance means is extremely inventive, and the entire message thus falls into a kind of quotation marks. It is no wonder that the piece elicited rapturous applause.” Writing in Táncművészet in 1991 about one of Juronics’s new works, Rita Major observed: “Etűdök népzenére (Etudes to Folk Music) brought together four longer or shorter dance compositions. Among them, Tamás Juronics’s Delírium (Delirium), choreographed to montage music, stood out. It articulated a Central European emotional sensibility through surreal images, lyricism and irony, with exciting structure and effective theatrical devices.” In one of his more dramatic works, Egy alig használt szárítókötél visszaemlékezései (Recollections of a Slightly Used Clothesline) – which, by his own admission, was inspired by Jorma Uotinen, who had recently worked in Szeged as a guest choreographer – “the dancers build on a fusion of modern techniques, and the duets are refreshingly natural. The choreography’s clear and simple dramaturgy gradually traces a path from humour to tragedy, revealing the subtle shades of everyday life. It does not explain; it simply shows, allowing the viewer to form their own interpretation freely.”
After only the first year of the Studio Ballet’s operation, Juronics was invited by the company’s artistic director to create a larger work for the entire ensemble. The result was Képzelet órája (The Hour of Imagination) (1991), a production that posed a considerable challenge and brought significant success for the young choreographer. “Juronics is a genuine talent who, through continuous creative work, will presumably mature into a major choreographer,” wrote Lívia Fuchs.
Alongside the early development of his choreographic career, Juronics was by this time working as Imre Zoltán’s first choreographic assistant, while also performing leading roles as a principal dancer in works by Imre Zoltán, György Krámer, Katalin Lőrinc, Bernd Schindowsky, Jorma Uotinen and Roberto Galván. In 1993 – following Imre Zoltán’s departure – he became the artistic director and principal choreographer of the company, reorganised under the name Szegedi Kortárs Balett (Szeged Contemporary Dance Company). At only twenty-four, he began shaping an ensemble with a distinctive profile and a unique artistic vocabulary. As a boundary-pushing, autonomous artist determined to follow his own path, he was among the first Hungarian choreographers to incorporate elements of contemporary dance into his works. His choreography is marked by a refined technical mastery rooted partly in modern methods (Limón, Cunningham, Contact Improvisation) and partly in his own improvisational movement language. As Erzsébet Sulyok wrote in Szeged in 1999, on the occasion of the city’s most prestigious award being conferred upon him by the Szeged Foundation’s Arts Board: “This process is not only about learning and creating contemporary dance techniques, but also about forming the particular, original world of modern dance theatre that exists only in Juronics’s work – and, of course, about the process of self-discovery. Juronics has since said a thousand times: however well he has mastered various modern techniques, they cannot emerge from him unchanged ‘at the twitch of a finger’. Precisely because they are at his fingertips, they undergo a Juronics-like transformation. He filters the learned movement vocabulary through himself and reshapes it in his own image.” The article continues: “In characterising Juronics’s dance works – or rather, his dance-theatre works – originality naturally also means creative invention. It means a personal quality. His works are not shaped solely by the inner laws of movement and technique, but by the choreographer’s own world of thought, imagination and emotion. This is the basis and explanation of the peculiar duality characteristic of Juronics’s pieces: they somehow always oscillate between reality and surrealism. He speaks about everyday – that is, realistic – human relationships while constantly exploring the abstract, philosophical possibilities of the body, matter and existence, all the while challenging each of his dancers with the very concrete physical demands of expression. He willingly employs a variety of theatrical means: his performance spaces are sometimes strikingly material and concrete (e.g. Porond [The Arena], Tavaszi áldozat [The Rite of Spring], Sárember [Mudman], Szilánkok [Shards]), at other times abstract and surreal (e.g. The Hour of Imagination, A mi cellánk [Our Cell], Kroki [Croquis]). They always serve a dramaturgical function, as does the lighting.” In an interview, Tamás Juronics expressed his artistic credo as follows: “I want to entertain and to make people think. I aim to offer a total theatrical experience far more complex than something approached solely from the perspective of dance. Movement is only one element of the dance-theatre experience. The overall theatrical visuality, the play of light and sound, and the quality of the acting all play crucial roles.”
Within a short period, the Szeged Contemporary Dance Company – whose distinctive artistic spirit attracted growing interest from both audiences and the dance profession – became one of Hungary’s leading modern ensembles, gaining recognition at an international level as well. In addition to Hungarian dancers, the company was strengthened by foreign performers (from Germany, Switzerland and Italy) with exceptionally high technical skills. Alongside the works of the company’s principal choreographer – the increasingly unmistakable Juronics pieces – numerous renowned international creators also produced works for the ensemble, among them Roberto Galván, Itzik Galili, Myriam Naisy, Vera Sander and Ben Craft. Dance historian and critic Lívia Fuchs assessed the phenomenon as follows: “In a ballet world dominated by routine and mediocrity, the work of a single artistic team – that of the Szeged Contemporary Dance Company, which long ago turned its back on classical foundations – maintains a consistently high standard. Each premiere by the small ensemble is an important event in our dance life, for it repeatedly confronts us with the present state of European dance art, while the company simultaneously cultivates its own distinctive identity through the work of its resident choreographer, Tamás Juronics.”
Parallel to its domestic success, the company presented itself in numerous international guest appearances, performing in Israel, Iraq, Germany, the Netherlands, England and Belgium, among other countries. Juronics’s first full-evening choreography, Mudman (1996) – inspired by the Szeged poet Zoltán Polner’s collection of folk origin myths – was already the mature work of an accomplished creator for a successfully developed company. As Anna Pór observed: “In Mudman, his compelling dancer’s presence and his distinctively ironic choreographic vision are fully realised. […] The juxtaposition of the humour found in folk philosophy with the sarcastically distancing gaze of ‘contemporary’ choreography is a perfect hit.” The review concludes: “Hardly anyone from the cast could be omitted. All fourteen dancers of the Szeged Contemporary Dance Company command acrobatic technique with ease, and their artistic expressiveness is equally noteworthy. The new production gives hope that the company’s palette will continue to grow richer, and that the expanding movement vocabulary will offer even more opportunities for its dancers’ individuality to emerge.” Following this, the repertoire developed through modern dance-theatre works based on montage structures or on compositions by contemporary composers (such as Balanescu, Eötvös, Ligeti and Pärt), as well as on major classics of the musical canon (Pergolesi, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Tchaikovsky) and on works by the two giants, Bartók and Stravinsky. Juronics created his own variation of The Miraculous Mandarin, along with The Rite of Spring, Fából faragott királyfi (The Wooden Prince), Carmina Burana, Requiem, The Firebird, Bolero, Carmen, The Wedding and a reimagining of Swan Lake. Koltai Tamás, theatre critic, regarded Juronics’s 1999 interpretation of The Miraculous Mandarin as an important milestone: “I consider Juronics’s Mandarin to be epoch-making – a congenial synthesis of dance and theatricality, of movement and scenography. To reveal passion in horror, and horror in passion: this, I feel, stands remarkably close to the original Lengyel–Bartók conception, even if he altered the plot. […] Reality and expressivity are realised in an exceptionally high-level unity, which, interestingly, resonates between the work’s time of creation and our own.” In connection with the significant success of Carmen, Zsuzsa Kaán wrote: “Once again, the Szeged Contemporary Dance Company has proved that it is indeed possible for a Hungarian company to deliver world-class work through the language of contemporary dance. Of course, it requires at least a choreographer of Juronics’s calibre and a company capable of employing the vocabulary of contemporary dance at the level achieved by the Szeged Contemporary Dance Company.”
Today, Juronics has become an internationally recognised creator, with more than fifty choreographies to his name. His works blend philosophical and emotional strands with intellectual motifs in a distinctive manner. The cathartic impact of his pieces arises from the considered interplay of a narrative he often authors himself, a refined and coherent formal language, and a thoughtfully constructed dramaturgical structure. The visual design, lighting, effects and music constitute essential and integral components of his creations.
Finally, an excerpt from András Pataki’s – friend and director of the Szeged Contemporary Dance Company – laudation on Tamás Juronics’s inaugural lecture at the Academy: “Stravinsky and Bartók are among his favourites. The Wedding, The Rite of Spring, Orpheus, The Miraculous Mandarin, The Wooden Prince and Dance Suite have all become legendary. I must also mention Carl Orff, whose celebrated Carmina Burana inspired him to create a masterpiece of dance history. With this choreography – performed more than 200 times – the company has toured almost the entire world. Every one of his works bears his unique style, characterised by the movement vocabulary of acrobatic contemporary dance and by dance-theatre elements that intensify visual impact. In his creations, profound emotions and ideas appear through richly layered theatrical means. His theatrical sensibility, artistic acuity and musical intelligence continually encourage him to test his creative abilities in other stage genres as well. He directs spoken drama – Vörös malom (The Red Mill) by Ferenc Molnár, Gogol’s Marriage – and stages musicals such as Hair and West Side Story, though it is truly the world of opera that draws him most strongly. In this field, too, he has created enduring works. His productions of A kékszakállú herceg vára (Bluebeard’s Castle), Háry János, Rigoletto, The Tales of Hoffmann, La Traviata, Francesca da Rimini and The Damnation of Faust have been met with unanimous acclaim. Alongside all this, he gladly collaborates with other directors as a choreographer for stage movement. He is a successful and committed theatre professional. A creator of epochal significance.”
[2016]