Eszter Herold

dancer, choreographer, teacher

L1-resident artist 2013 and member of L1 Association (2014-2021)

10 Questions – 10 Answers
Where would you like to wake up tomorrow morning?
In our future – now still shattered – home in Martonvásár, in one of the self-built, rustic rooms.

Can you name a book, a movie, a piece or a song, which you think is about you?
Tonio Kröger by Thomas Mann, Demian by Herman Hesse. And somehow the movie The Double Life of Veronique, although there are no parallels recognizable. Still its atmosphere is a lot like me.

What was your greatest rebellion as a teenager?
Maybe it was a slow rebellion to stick with acting in spite of all the parental disapproval, and somehow not letting it go, then without encouragement or support – not to say praise – of any kind, fighting through with a few friends to study modern dance (by finding a teacher and a space) in our small town, where it was really not fashionable at that time.

What would you do, if you wouldn’t be doing what you do now?
I would run a café with literature, home-made cookies, wine & cheese, a walnut tree, and comprehensible classical and jazz music. I would be baking the cookies. I don’t take on the management.    

What are the first three items on your bucket list?
To get there in my life and with my partner to give a sibling to our son, Álmos, in love, peace and safeness.
To enjoy the happiness with my fiancé in our home built brick by brick.
To arrange my poems into a book.

Do you have any superstitions or rituals before entering the stage?
Not really. But more recently I have been creating pieces – no matter if for myself or others –, which start with breathing. Since I am so nervous when the lights go up, I need to leave some time for myself or the dancer – in spite of all the backstage preparation and focusing –, to finally arrive there and breathe their way into the awaiting story. To start moving when they are ready. When all their attention is already circulating in their movement and their body.

When and how do you get your best ideas?
In the most impossible and most common situations. On the tram, on the escalator, during shopping, in bed, half asleep. Therefore, most of the time I cannot make a record of them and half of the ideas perish. I created my very first choreography in my dorm room, in my bed, under the blanket. Since there was no rehearsal space, only the dusty basement of the dorm, where I coughed at every movement. So I invented upstairs what I tried out downstairs. This is how I created my first duet.

What is your oldest piece of clothing?
The oldest dress at home is actually not mine but my father’s, he wore it in the weeks after his birth. After my son was born, I put it on him on the second day in the hospital. I have been keeping the dress and the picture safe since then.

Is there one fact about you, which would surprise others if they would know it?
That I am a quite good cook, and that if I can focus again, I want to keep on writing (as well), that I have a sister, and I can have a good laugh at very popular things besides being interested in high art. Indeed! Also, I can move my right ear.

How do you see yourself in ten years?
As a happy wife, the lady of the house, as a mother, a good – still very enthusiastic but not distraught and struggling – teacher, an independent creator opening the doors of even deeper and quieter layers.

(January 2016)