Dancing Health Minister-designate honoured with alternative special award for promoting dancing

“Without any political overtones or bias, may we be allowed the liberty to hereby symbolically, online, award the future Minister of Health an alternative Rudolf Lábán special prize for his outstanding efforts in promoting dancing! – it was announced on the Facebook page of the Rudolf Lábán Award.

The Rudolf Lábán Award is the most prestigious recognition awarded for contemporary dance performances in Hungarian theater; this year it is being presented for the twenty-first time. Its board of trustees has now honored the future Minister of Health.

On the Award's official page, they promised that in a few weeks, on 28 May, at the professional symposium and Lábán Award ceremony, the board would put on its "hardcore" professional face, but they couldn’t go without commenting on Hegedűs’s dance. “Welcome to the mission, Dr. Zsolt Hegedűs!” they wrote, referring to promoting dancing.

Zsolt Hegedűs, the incoming Minister of Health gained international fame for his dance at the Tisza Party's event celebrating their election victory on April 12. Although he had previously said that his spontaneous performance was a one-time event, he ended up breaking into a dance againt after the inauguration of the new Hungarian parliament on 9 May, and was later joined by members of the Tisza faction during Jalja’s live performance. The video of the dance once again made headlines around the world.

“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance" Hegedűs wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday, quoting from the book of Ecclesiastes 3:1–4.

On Monday, the minister-designate was heard by the parliament's Health Committee where he announced, among other things, that Nobel laureate Katalin Karikó would be one of the members of his advisory board.