17 artists, five performances, an 8-hour durational performance, and three venues in Bucharest connected across the city: SUMA brings together contemporary dance, storytelling, and mindful touch in a project exploring how we can recover together after profound collective experiences
SUMA is an Active Art project coordinated by Bogdan Georgescu, alongside Paula Dunker and Raj Alexandru Udrea, which explores the possibilities of community recovery and regeneration through shared, in-the-moment experiences. SUMA is based on the idea that we are the sum of our experiences, memories, sensations, and emotions, and on the questions raised by the collective traumatic experiences of recent years:
What can be recovered? What do we let go of? What do we carry forward? Who are we?
The pandemic, political instability, the economic crisis, and the war at the border have changed both our individual lives and the way we relate to one another, to our own bodies, and to the community. Physical distancing and the increasing mediation of relationships through screens have exacerbated a crisis of direct contact and, with it, the need for unmediated experiences: face-to-face encounters, physical presence, and emotions felt in the body and shared with others.
In preparation for the performance, the artists participated in three workshops on contemporary dance, storytelling, and somatic/conscious touch, led by Carmen Coțofană, Katia Pascariu, and Mădălina Dan. Movement, stories told and listened to face-to-face, and conscious, consensual touch gradually built a shared artistic language and became the tools through which the project explores what we can recover and regenerate together.
The Active Art methodology upon which SUMA is built proposes art as a collective process of living together, in which the boundary between artist and audience, between performer and witness, becomes permeable. During the 8 hours, the audience moves freely, at their own pace and in the order of their choosing, between the three components and the three spaces. The performance continues along the paths connecting them—which are best explored on foot—and Bucharest thus becomes the fourth space of the performance.
The project also includes Bogdan Georgescu’s exhibition “365,” built around a collection of 365 pairs of earrings photographed daily between May 1, 2019, and April 30, 2020. Begun before the pandemic and completed two months after it began, the collection becomes an archive of places, experiences, and days, and brings to SUMA the perspective of an individual form of recovery. From there, the project takes the question further: how do we do this together?
Schedule
SUMA performances will take place on September 10, 11, 19, 20, and 27, from 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., at Galeria 26, Atelier 35, and—depending on the day—Linotip – Independent Choreographic Center or the National Center for Dance in Bucharest. Participation is by registration via this form.
The “365” exhibition can be visited at Atelier 35 from September 10–27, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM, as well as on days when there are no performances. No registration is required to visit the exhibition.
Press Contact:
Vlad Hodrea
Email: hodreaz@gmail.com
Phone: 0746 654 789
A cultural project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund.
The project does not necessarily reflect the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or for how its results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the grant recipient.
A project produced by ADO – Art for Human Rights, with support from AFCN.
Partners: National Center for DanceBucharest, Linotip – Independent Choreographic Center, Atelier 35, Gallery 26. Media partners: Scena9, RFI Romania, CUTRA.
This project is part of the Political Theater Season.
