ONE THOUSAND FACES
Aerial Dance Collective
About the collective
One Thousand Faces aerial collective was founded in November of 2020, although it was in June 2020 when we started to work together as a group. The four of us started to regularly practice aerial together at INspiral Circus Center and it was there when we realised that we were sharing the same goal - to create a show. That was the beginning of a big journey. Within the year OTF recieved the Hungarian National Cultural Fund and the support of Artus Studio with the concept of our performance Ezerarcú Szépassony. We wrote and researched the piece ourselves and received dramaturgical support from Emily Aoibheann (Creation Aerial).
We premiered "Ezeracú Szépasszony" in the summer of 2021 at Artus Studio. The same year we participated in Cyrkulacje Eastern European Circus Festival and received the Second Prize and the Media award debuting an extract from the show - our quartet ensemble "Axis". We were invited to bring our entire performance to Brussels for HOPLA! Festival (2022) with the cooperation of the Liszt Institute. In 2023 we reworked the show and retitled to "Terra". In 2023 "Terra" was invited to play at Artus Studio, The Valley Of Arts Festival in Hungary, EJC (The European Juggling Convention) in Poland and to Bitef Theatre in Serbia.
We are thrilled to be able to share our story with the public and have the ability to connect with audiences and receive feedback from the local and artistic community. Our aims and expectations are to broaden our artistic experiences and awareness of responsible creation. We are currently at such a stage of the work where we need to share our creation outside of our usual context.
Dorottya Podmaniczky
Contemporary dancer, teacher and aerialist graduated at the Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy. She is constantly training herself in domestic and foreign courses. In 2015, she founded her own collective called Psycle Of Movement Imagination, under which with her partner, they create performances that include contemporary dance, martial arts and aerial dance. She currently teaches contemporary dance and aerial hoop at INspiral Circus Center. As a contemporary dancer she maintains constant research and experimentation in her creative and performing works. Coming from contemporary dance with her approach, her movement in the air is filled with new and abstract meanings, acrobatics become aerial dance. She is excited by abstract shapes and the unusual, novel movement of the body. She considers the formation of character arising from the physical system to be important both in the air and on the ground. Floor work is also an important area for her, where it is soft, organic, isolated and sometimes energetic movements appear.
Reka Zetelaki
Reka Zetelaki is currently an aerial acrobatics instructor at the Inspiral Circus Center. Interpreting the circus as a fairy tale for her students regularly appears in her choreographed performances, in which magic often plays a role in stories. In 2019, Georgina Cassels and Reka created the first aerial acrobatics meeting (Budapest Aerial Meeting) in Budapest. The Budapest Time Travellers circus-theatre show written and staged by her, presenting famous moments of Budapest circus history performance that was presented in March 2020.
Marta Matovelle
Born in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. She completed her university studies as an art historian in Valencia, and meanwhile she completed a professional circus training with specialisation in trapeze at the Associació Valenciana de Circ. In 2019, she moved to Budapest, and during this last three years she has been developing her circus skills at Inspiral Circus Space. Also in this period she cofounded One Thousand Faces and La Prima. She has been also participating in circus pedagogic projects, such as the Cabuwazi circus (Germany) workshop, projects focusing on the inclusion of minority groups in Inspiral Circus Center, CATE in Cirqueon (Czech Republic) and a Slovenian social circus project organised by Cirkokrog. Marta works with her body in a way that she respects its possibilities and researches the movement based on slow management. Self-expression in the form of physical theatre, dancing or clowning is important to her practice.
Georgina Cassels
Georgina Ilona Cassels (1992) is a circus artist educated at the National Centre for Circus Arts (2013-15) and Gravity Circus Centre (2017) and currently based in Budapest. In 2017 Georgina spent three months working with the Palestinian Circus School as a volunteer aerial instructor. In 2018 Georgina moved to Budapest and has since performed for Firebirds Circus and collaborated as part of an aerial rope duo ‘Rollmeknot’ researching innovative duo techniques and teaching workshops and performing across Europe. She is the co-founder of the Budapest based inter-disciplinary aerial collective One Thousand Faces with their show ‘TERRA’. Both projects were granted awards at the Cyrkulacje Contemporary Circus Festival in 2020 & 2021. In 2019 and 2022, Georgina organised and co-hosted the Budapest Aerial Meeting, collaborated with Emily Aoibeann on a conceptual piece “A Year of the Heart” traveling twice to Ireland to develop the project in artistic residency. Georgina is currently working on a Croatian project ‘Konstrukt’ led by Dora Komenda/Cirkus Kolektiv which was selected as a CircusNext finalist of 2023 and is a fellow of the New Horizon’s Leadership Program EU of 2023-24 led by Cirkus Syd, DYNAMO, and Rigas Cirks and is currently under the mentorship of Maartje Bonarius, Artistic Director of Tall Tales Company.