Scooter in Sarkad - Peter Ajtai

This programme is held in Hungarian.

In 1995, the Scooter band visited Hungary and performed in Sarkad, a small town with a population of 9,000 located in the Southern Great Plain near the Romanian border. The eurotrance band's concert, which was the most popular at the time, stirred up the quiet village life, attracting young people from all over the country. The members of Scooter arrived at the cultural house in a minibus with their entourage and were treated to hospitality likely unlike anything they had previously experienced. They entered the building, and the ceremony began in German and Hungarian, culminating with the mayor presenting the band with a carpet, saying it was a magic carpet that would "fly them to the top of the charts." This was a valuable moment of community house culture, from an era when it was considered one of the most important social spaces. The surreal documentation of the event can be found on YouTube, as an example cited by the band.    

The performance aims to present the post-socialist art theatre culture of the 90s through contemporary jazz and improvisational theatre. Scooter on Sarkadon aims to show how a community's life changes when famous people come to live there. The performance lasts about an hour and is written by Péter Ajtai, who in this work attempts to create something that has characterised his previous orchestras, but in a much more closed form: performing freedom with a community of consensus rules. Ajtai wants to draw attention to the fact that the disappearance of Hungarian art-house culture - or at least its diminishing role - has left a void in cultural life, as avant-garde music, folk music and popular music can easily coexist in these venues. In a way, this is the void that the House of  Music aims to fill.