World Champion Tap Dancer to Perform at This Year’s Spectacular Anna Ball

Hungary Today 2024.06.28.

The 199th Anna Ball will be held on July 27 in Balatonfüred (northern shore of Lake Balaton), with 600 guests expected to attend, writes Magyar Nemzet. The ball is traditionally accompanied by the Anna Festival, and several other programs. This year, the women will wear a pale purple porcelain heart inspired by the rose garden of the Tagore Promenade in the town.

“Preparations are also under way for next year’s 200th anniversary of the ball, coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Mór Jókai. These two anniversaries are important for Balatonfüred,” stressed mayor István Bóka.

Hungarian novelist Mór Jókai. Photo via Wikipedia

The town invited 18-year-old girls from Balatonfüred to the Anna Ball again this year. Before the event, the participants traditionally gather in the garden of the Vaszary villa, from where the procession will start to the renewed Anna Grand Hotel.

The ball will evoke the music and atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s, and the audience will vote for the 15 girls who will be chosen by a professional jury as the ball’s belle and ladies-in-waiting.

The Anna Grand Hotel. Photo via Facebook/Anna Grand Hotel

“The ball will feature performances by Bálint Gájer, the Cotton Club Singers and Gábriel Farkas, while the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra will recall the famous Arizona nightclub scene and its divas. Zséda, Gabi Szűcs and Orsolya Kozma will sing, four pairs of swing tap dancers, and world champion tap dancer László Bóbis will also perform,” noted the festival’s director Anett Kositzky. In addition, ballet dancers from the Hungarian State Opera will dance during the evening.

At midnight, they will present the belle of the ball and her two ladies-in-waiting,

who will also perform on the Kisfaludy Stage the next day, and then promenade around the city.

Photo via Facebook/Anna Grand Hotel

Fact

The Anna ball is traditionally the feast of debutantes, when parents introduce their grown-up children to society. The 18-year-old girls living in Balatonfüred are invited to the Ball by the town. The first Anna Ball was held on July 26, 1825 in Balatonfüred, in the Horváth House, in the inn of János Horváth Fülöp Szentgyörgyi, in honor of the host’s daughter. It was on that evening that the young Anna Krisztina met her future husband, Ernő Kiss, a hussar lieutenant-general who later became a martyr-general of Arad (now in Romania) during the Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence of 1848–1849.

In his memory, the Herend porcelain statue of a hussar has been presented every year since 2003, to a man who did and does a lot for the culture and spiritual life of Balatonfüred.

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Via Magyar Nemzet; Featured image via Facebook/Anna Grand Hotel