Irene Plaque
Irene Plaque is a Hungarian–Slovenian collective based in Budapest, working at the intersections of dance, choreography, facilitation, and philosophy. Its members are Katalin Bitó, Zsófia Szász, and Alja Branc Barbosa. Their collaboration emerges from shared human, economic, and artistic needs, and prioritizes creative practices shaped by human-scale, anti-capitalist thinking. Their works are formed by their contexts and the current states of the performers, while consciously cultivating collective reflection on dance, art, and communit.
Works
HOLD.me
HOLD.me examines the possibilities of coexistence and connection, exploring relationships with ourselves and with others. In their new performance, the dance collective formed by Katalin Bitó, Alja Branc Barbosa, and Zsófia Szász invites audiences into an intimate space to collectively explore practices of superficial wellness, extreme self-care, and the world of touchless interactions.
HOLD.me examines the high-contrast terrain of contemporary alignment, exploring phenomena such as touchless interaction, superficial wellness, and the convenience of inaction. It explores the pursuit of the aesthetic markers of wealth, alongside practices of extreme self-care.
The performance focuses on the tension between externally imposed expectations and the inner experience of intimacy, revealing how the absence or reduction of physical touch can make us increasingly vulnerable to invisible external systems of norms and rules. It explores the body’s responses in a state of unpreparedness for touch, as well as how proximity and distance, or encounters with living and non-living forms — such as images and memories — shape our perception.
The TITÁNium-winning performance invites audiences into a multi-sensory environment: in the dimmed space, the dominance of vision is reduced, creating an opportunity to collectively sense what can be preserved and shared from the experience of touch and connection.
Concept, creators, performers, production: Irene Plaque
Music: Balázs Pattantyús
Set design: Benedek Benczúr
Lighting design: Júlia Mohácsi
Project management: Lili Stern
Co-production: Trafó, Workshop Foundation (Műhely Alapítvány)
The project was created within the framework of the FÜGE TITÁNium programme.
Supporters: National Cultural Fund of Hungary (NKA), Mastercard, Trafó
Supporting institution: SIN Arts Culture Center
Mastercard Alkotótárs – TITÁNium winning performance, 2024.
Premier: 26.03.2026 Trafó Houes of Contemporary Arts
Dollhouse
The work is an improvisational participatory performance where the audience is invited by the performers to share their opinions and take part in the creative process. It draws inspiration from the surrounding environment and is therefore flexible and adaptable. The piece becomes a playful performative conversation about the place where it happens. The dolls are there to turn the ideas, thoughts, and wishes of the people present into spontaneous moments of art. Wherever we perform becomes the topic of the performance, and whoever we perform for becomes our creative partner.
Concept and performers: Irene Plaque
Make up and sytl: Irene Plaque
Costume: Zsófia Szász
Performred at: Pesti Vigadó, U500 Festival Artus, KoloChristmas, Kőbánya Underground Fest
The meeting / the next meeting
Having drifted to the edge of definability, in times of redefining, undefining, self-searching and self-questioning, Irene Plaque decided to become something.
This is an invitation to The NEXT Meeting: come, be present, and help Irene see clearly during this tough yet magical time.
The Meeting is about Irene themselves: their art and creation, their past, present and future, friendship and connection. They get inspired by whatever is at hand: their surroundings, circumstances, experiences, dreams, moods and thoughts, feelings and emotions in the here and now of NEXTFEST.
The Meeting is an abstract yet simple event, a performative conference, a constant flow of thoughts, simultaneous construction and deconstruction. Your attention, feedback, and suggestions are crucial for Irene.
You can bring your laptop, smartphone and notebook, and become part of the whole conference experience. Pens, ropi (salty sticks), and soda are provided.
Concept, Performance, Dance, Costume, Set design: Irene Plaque
Supported by: Workshop Foundation, SIN Arts Center, Trafó Houes of Contemporary Arts
Performed at: Manyi Cultural Center, Trafó Houes of Contemporary Arts
danceshop
Edition 1
Dance Shop is an experimental dance interpretation event-series, organised in collaboration between Workshop Foundation Budapest and Irene Plaque – a collective comprising Alja Branc, Katalin Bitó and Zsófia Szász.
It aims to build a platform where dance and performance materials at an early stage can be presented to a varied audience to reflect on the seen materials. The project aims to develop the discourse and exchange between artists and audiences. The event contains introduction speeches, work-in-progress presentations, games for the audience, and curated discussion – all in a casual atmosphere.
Each edition of Dance Shop has a theme or a topic. For the first edition it is “think twice”, referring to the fact that every performance will be done twice. Based on that we will offer the audience games and talks.
With performers Asbóth Máté, Simkó Beatrix and Kudlák Eszter and creative audience support by Imre Vass.
18 December, Workshop Foundation Budapest.
Edititon 2 – Where is the dance?
Prepare for a a nice spring walking work-in-progress presentation of the upcoming frontstage contemporary musical Hősnők tere / Heroines’ square and a pleasant discussion after with snacks and drinks.
The second edition of Dance Shop plays with the idea of defining what is the dance that we want to see. What we see and consider as dance when we are intentionally looking for it and have the expectation to see it. Do people have different or similar expectations and ideas about what dance is? In what different ways people look for the dance?
The subject of the experiment this time is the upcoming frontstage contemporary musical of Thury Zita – Varsányi Szirének: Hősnők tere (Heroine’s square)
During the presentation, we will walk through the upcoming outdoor musical route and its main locations, and then we will share our experiences in a moderated discussion.
Performers: Thury Zita, Borsos Luca, Szári Laura (chorus leader: Varsányi Szirének)
10 April, 2025
At: Budapest Outdoars
Edition 3 – Sum Up
Dance Shop is gathering to sum up the season in its third and final edition. Irene Plaque invites you to join them to summarise the gathered experience whilst witnessing new materials and continue to interpret.
Dance Shop is an experimental dance interpretation event-series.
It aims to build a platform where dance and performance materials at an early stage can be presented to a varied audience to reflect on the seen materials. The project aims to develop the discourse and exchange between artists and audiences. The event contains introduction speeches, work-in-progress presentations, games for the audience, and curated discussion – all in a casual atmosphere.
SUM UP, the 3rd edition of Dance Shop is a three-day event, a retrospection on the previous editions, the initiative of Dance Shop, and reflection itself. Join us for three days of watching and reflecting on dance, creating your own artwork based on your interpretation, and sharing your thoughts and experiences.
Participation in the previous sessions is not a prerequisite for attending.
Programme
Friday 23 May
Thury Zita & Varsányi SzIrének
Saturday 24 May
Tamaskó Helén
Sunday 25 May
Dance Shop SUMMIT
Creative Audience Support: Sergiu Matis
Concept, organisation and hosting: Irene Plaque
The event is organized in collaboration with Workshop Foundation
At: Trafó Houes of Contemporary Arts
Acca Horvath - Zsófia Szász: Interiour Story
Interior Stroy is the story of an inner rearrangement. After moving to a new home, old, heavy, carefully crafted wooden furniture is replaced by practical, easily replaceable objects. The furniture becomes an unconscious symbol: it reflects one’s life situation, social relationships, motivations, and sense of absence. By stepping into the “skin” of two pieces of furniture, Attila Horváth and Zsófia Szász explore what meanings objects carry today, and how two “pieces of furniture” – two bodies – are able to connect with each other under changing circumstances.
Creaters, performers: Attila Horváth, Zsófia Szász
Music: Áron Lőrinczi
Costume consultation: Csenge Vass provided guidance on the costume design; the final costumes were created by Attila Horváth and Zsófia Szász
Production Partner: Tünet Együttes
First work-in-progress showing: 15 June 2025, U500 Festival
Planned premier: 11.12.2026, MU Theater
The Symptoms
On Wingless Angels
A 57-year-old woman who, three years ago, put her independent company on hold — a company she had built from nothing and led for 20 years — and who now does not know what to do with herself in this World: what to do with her knowledge, her desire to create, her ageing, her longing for an inspiring yet homely community, the losses and depression of the past 16 years, the sense of a futurelessness that has seeped under her skin, and the ruins left behind after the NER, now that this might finally be the moment to act. And there is also her bewildering passion for contemporary dance, and her conviction that contemporary dance is a political statement.
A 27-year-old female dancer and creator whose career is just beginning. A woman who longs to be seen, heard, and recognised. Who primarily wants to dance, but also wants to create and express herself in any other way possible. She wants to be welcomed into the World, yet her body and soul do not conform to the expected norms. Her desire for connection and her lived experience of loneliness are constantly in conflict with one another. She wants to heal and to heal others, to smooth things over, to investigate, and to understand deeply. She is curious, honest, sensitive, uncertain — and while she anxiously chases her future, she dreams that contemporary dance will conquer humanity.
And the place: Hungary, where contemporary dance belongs among the endangered art forms — condemned to extinction by the previous cultural policy. A country where, over the past 16 years, many things that the two women believe in have been eroded: a value system based on professional standards, recognition of the power of inner motivation and curiosity, free and independent thinking, a culture of debate, transparency, and the practice of supporting statements with facts and arguments. A country now filled with hope, doubt, and impatience.
In November 2025, Réka Szabó invites Zsófia Szász to help her bring order to her thoughts, her heart, and her professional past, to reflect, through dance, on the turmoil she currently finds herself in. They begin to talk, through words, dance, drawing, and creation. The duet of the two women, through their personal revelations and curiosity, becomes a constantly evolving, living imprint of the contemporary world and of the role of art within it. The performance offers an insight into their present-tense thinking through an experimental language of form. For Zsófi, beyond the act of creation itself, this collaboration is about experiencing a sense of community that reaches across generations. For Réka, it may represent the possibility of starting again, entering into dialogue with younger generations, and the beginning of building a new creative environment, as part of her programme Rendrakás (Putting Things in Order).
Creaters and performers: Réka Szabó and Zsófia Szász
Outsdie eyes: Lili Raubinek, Luca Petrányi
Lights: Kata Dézsi
Premier: 19.09.2026. MU Theater
Work-in-progress prenestation: MU, Festival versions: Thealter Szeged, Ördögkatlan around Lake Balaton
