Drozdik Orshi’s (1946) series Individual Mythology No. 3 was inspired by free dance, a liberation movement that became fashionable in the early 20th century, combining modern women’s gymnastics and avant-garde theatrical experiments. The example of the movement and its dancers – such as Isadora Duncan, who performed in Budapest in 1902, and Valéria Dienes, who created her own movement system, orchestics – was a decisive inspiration for Drozdik: it became an optional, possible and even attractive female role model. Free dance overthrew the tradition of classical ballet, its code system, its practice of body regulation, and at the same time the contemporary ideal of feminine beauty. It freed dance from its constraints and promoted a more natural way of life. The artist projects her own movements, formulated in the spirit of free dance, onto the movements of these dancers, on archival photographs. The two female figures crossing over each other celebrate the liberation of the plasticity of the body and of the female body’s movement, by abandoning the inhibiting garments, through the homage of their evoked predecessors. Dance as a leitmotif in many of Drozdik’s works has become a means of expressing the freedom of the individual.
Andrea Tarczali