Author: renate.dinu

Born in 1962 in Madrid, La Ribot is one of the most inventive and prolific performance artists, both a dancer and a choreographer. In 1975 she began studying classical dance in Madrid. In 1986, together with dancer Bianca Calvo and a group of artists and dancers, she founded Bocanada Danza. In 1993 she started working on the development of her extensive performance project Piezas Distinguidas, which she continues to this day.

The two volumes are indispensable materials for researching the work of an artist who has constantly positioned herself critically, radically, in direct confrontation with social and political issues, oppressive normative models, conventionally imposed beauty standards, idolized or demonized images of femininity, structures of hierarchical production.

The first volume is an archive of the creator-researcher, a collection of poems from performative pieces made by the artist or from the books that inspired her, a collection of observational photographs or performances, a collection of actions that she notes accurately and emphasizes with markers of different colors, a collection of thoughts, drawings, quotes. The first volume is the opening to the creative laboratory.

The second volume includes several analytical essays dedicated to the creations of the artist.

Adrian Heathfield writes about the meticulousness with which La Ribot builds her entire appearance repertoire in Panoramix, from the sequence in which the body is stretched with its back to the audience, moved only by successive spasms, to the arrangement of objects. Heathfield also discusses the difficulty of capturing the artist’s actions in an analytical vocabulary, of writing about the event of fragility she insitutes.

Jose A. Sanchez offers a unique perspective of analysis, emphasizing the tradition of a gallery of comedians – Buster Keaton, Joan Brossa – with whom La Ribot is related in the aesthetic and ethical approach of the material she works with. Sanchez talks about the “humor” of the artist, about the oscillation between gag, playful and serious.

Laurent Goumarre begins his essay with a comparison between the immobility of Isadora Duncan and that of the choreographer La Ribot. While Duncan stood motionless for hours, waiting for a gesture to be born, she turned the immobility of the lying body into a gesture of resistance, transforming horizontality into a state of suppression for the flow of movements.

Gerald Siegmund invites us to look at Piezas Distinguidas as emblems of absence in which objects and the gaze on objects have a very, very special place, sometimes in the absence of a body that can order them. In “Candida Iluminaris”, between a doll in clothes, a watch, a sign that says “Don’t touch!”, La Ribot takes off a sock, then one of the pink shoes, then the yellow sweater, until she remains nakes. and collapses next to a broken chair. Her downfall is a prelude to her absence.

André Lepecki writes about the choreographer’s ability to create a critical discourse on the limits of performative representation, alternating micro-gestures, extreme instinctual gestures with actions that test endurance. La Ribot permanently builds bodily and objective relationships on two levels: vertical and horizontal, between pictoriality and corporality.

La Ribot / Volum I, II (published by Merz & Center nationale de la danse, published in 2004) is available at the CNDB Media Library.

The CNDB Media Library, as a documentation resource, includes a collection of books and periodicals, as well as an extensive video collection. It contains not only titles from the history and theory of dance, critical thinking and performance theory, but also includes a varied collection from different areas: feminist studies, artist books, as well as numerous magazines and catalogues. The video collection includes both international productions of choreographers, dancers and contemporary dance companies, as well as dance films and video art works. We invite you to discover it, and for this purpose we have invited artists to make recommendations.

After Umeå, Barcelona, Pilsen, Aarhus, Sofia and Paris, Springback Academy will once again offer aspiring dance writers the chance to be mentored in the fundamentals of quality dance criticism in the action-packed environment of Spring Forward. Aerowaves annual festival will take place this year in Elefsina (Greece) on 28 April – 1 May 2022, hosted by the European Capital of Culture in Elefsina and DAN.C.CE UNITIVA.

We are now looking for up to 10 people with a lot of enthusiasm and some prior experience in writing about dance. The participants will be mentored by our team of leading critics including Donald Hutera (The Times), Sanjoy Roy (The Guardian), Kelly Apter (The Scotsman) and Laura Cappelle (New York Times).

Under their guidance, participants have the chance to create, shape and share conversations about dance and hone their critical writing skills. Springback Academy is a fast-track way to gain experience and technique in responsible, effective, attractive dance criticism as well as to explore and understand the opportunities that digital publishing has to offer.

PLUS – In March 2018, Springback Magazine was launched. The publication’s contributors are drawn exclusively from writers who have participated in the Springback Academy programme and form part of the ever-growing community of ‘graduate’ writers.

For examples of writing from previous years, visit Springback Academy online. For a quickstart guide to writing dance reviews, download the free PDF.

Apply before before 24:00 (GMT) Sunday 23 January 2022!

Find full application details and link here.

For enquiries, please contact: Springback Academy director Oonagh Duckworth (sbapplications@aerowaves.org).

Good luck!

After another year in which the performing arts were severely affected by the pandemic, the awards offered this year by the National Center for Dance Bucharest brought into question the pitfall of considering culture and artistic creation as being “non-essential”. This year’s edition of the CNDB Awards highlighted the role of art, recalling that it is what allows us to understand the present and to imagine a better future, while it creates well-being in our daily lives.

This year, the CNDB Awards were given, as usual non-hierarchically, to three winners. The event presented last night, December 12, by the actor Alex Bogdan could be watched online, marking the end of the “Three Days Laboratory”, a format designed to support artists in their creative process, in which, at CNDB’s invitation, choreographers and dancers from all over the country participated.

The first CNDB Award was given as a form of encouragement for “New Voices in Contemporary Dance”. The prize was awarded to Eliza Trefaș, a very young artist who is already showing her presence in several artistic projects on the Romanian choreographic scene, but also in international contexts.

The second award was granted for the outstanding contribution in the construction of contemporary dance and was received by Ștefania Ferchedău, freelance cultural manager, co-founder of the Institute of the Present and a professional with a long experience in developing projects in the fields of performing arts, management and politics, but also in education and cultural intervention, some of which contain international cooperation as an important component. Ștefania Ferchedău has been accompanying many different artistic phenomena for many years now. She is a researcher, editor, writer and creator of ideas, contributing to exhibitions and publications and creating contexts for others and their creations, so that they appear in the best possible light. She is not just an administrator, but a woman with vision, who with sensitivity and knowledge contributes to the design and implementation of many consistent projects in the field of visual and performing culture, without which the local scene would be much poorer.

The third prize awarded by CNDB was also granted for the outstanding contribution to the development of contemporary dance and went to Jan Burkhardt, German artist and international pedagogue, a connector of people and institutions from different geographical areas, a creator of opportunities and frameworks and production of knowledge. Jan Burkhardt is the one who supported the Romanian contemporary dance scene by coordinating the workshop program of the CNDB Academy of Dance and Performance and the one thanks to which the academy benefited from the presence of international teachers. Jan Burkhardt continues to create links between structures, artists and institutions from several countries and it is also due to him that in 2022, CNDB together with the National Theater University “Ion Luca Caragiale” and the University of Music Bucharest will participate in a large international cooperation project called “Relay”.

Last but not least, many thanks went to the audience that was alongside CNDB once again this year and that gives meaning each time to the entire cultural sector.

Ballet dancer, choreographer and teacher, Ioan Tugearu (November 19, 1937, Babuc, Bulgaria) studied dance with Floria Capsali and Mitiță Dumitrescu, later graduating from the Choreography High School “Floria Capsali” in Bucharest, the University of Sciences and Arts “Gheorghe Cristea ”and UNATC.

He was part of the first class that graduated from university dance courses for choreographers – initiated by the Ministry of Culture in 1975.

Ioan Tugearu was the Lead Principal of the National Opera in Bucharest (since 1965), and from 1977 he begun authoring dance pieces, while also working as a teacher at the High School of Choreography in Bucharest.

Ioan Tugearu danced, home and abroad, in numerous roles, including the main male roles in choreographies by Oleg Danovsky, Tilde Urseanu, Vasile Marcu and Floria Capsali.

He also performed contemporary dance roles in “Tunnel” after Ernesto Sabato, choreography by Mihaela Santo (1994) and in “Portrait of Dorian Gray”, choreography by Răzvan Mazilu (2004).

A CNDB 2021 production has been selected in the international program Aerowaves Twenty22! The performance that got selected is Coreomaniacii, concept and choreography by Simona Deaconescu, which was created together with the students of the CNDB Academy of Dance and Performance.

Choreomaniacs is a performative docu-fiction, chronologically following the events that marked the “dance epidemy” in the summer of 1518, in Strasbourg – a mass dystopian manifestation, which affected several hundred people. The show discusses the way we choose to look at dance, starting from a series of testimonials from the scholars of the period, a mix of pseudoscience, theology and medieval science-fiction, in contemporary movements. The focus is on the way the epidemic spread was documented, the events being told from the point of view of the watcher, never from the point of view of the one who lived them.

Simona Deaconescu

Felicitări Simonei Diaconescu și întregii echipe de creație: Vlaicu Golcea (muzica), Alexandros Raptis (Light design), Diana Dragu, GCongratulations to Simona Diaconescu and the entire creative team: Vlaicu Golcea (music), Alexandros Raptis (light design), Diana Dragu, Georgia Elza, Laura Murariu, Robert Popa, Adrian Popița (interpretation) and Laura Trocan (production)! For more information about the show, click here.

The Twenty22 program includes dance performances from 12 European countries and shows once again the richness of the emerging dance scene through the diversity of themes and aesthetics approached. For the complete list of Aerowaves Twenty22 artists, click here.

The National Center for Dance Bucharest announces that it won the ERASMUS+ funding for the project RELAY, together with its partners  Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln (DE), Den Danske Scenekunstskole (DK), SIKINNIS Dance and Performing Arts Centre (GR), National University of Theater and Cinematography “IL Caragiale” and the National University of Music Bucharest.

The RELAY project will be carried out over a period of three years (November 2021 – November 2024) and aims at developing existing knowledge, while contributing with new perspectives to dance, choreography, music composition and arts education fields.

RELAY emerged from a current approach in contemporary dance, which uses movement to examine the supposed duality of material and immaterial. The project also looks at how dance and music can find common ground in this exploration.

RELAY addresses the close relationship between dance and music, treating dance as a material for choreography and musical composition. Dance is traditionally seen as an ephemeral art form, even more so than music, both sharing the same immaterial form. RELAY starts from dance as a practice to generate artistic material through which it pervades into the theme of the mutual relationship between form and content, between material and immaterial.

The project is developed during a series of meetings organized together and hosted by the institutions participating in the project, where students and project teams from partner countries meet in processes of education, research, creation and transmission of knowledge.

Théâtre de la Ville Paris and terrain Company/Boris Charmatz, together with Hermès, are launching the call for applications for the seventh edition of DANSE ÉLARGIE 2022.

”During these strange pandemic times, have you often imagined yourself elsewhere? What about now? You have no idea anymore of what “normalcy” means? You would like to move, literally and figuratively? What if, this year, taking part in a dance competition were an excuse to get together and champion that which is dear to us? To experience our ideas? Our struggles? A space to present our hopes? To show the ineffable, the unheard, the ostentatious, the apparent, the understated?”

DANSE ÉLARGIE that competition. It is a call to artists from all over the world, from every field, without age limits, to introduce utterly original projects to be staged. To all those who birth art across the world, in the here and now, we invite you to be your moment, your era, your aspirations. To dare anything that dances, in the broadest sense of the term To invent future movements.

You will be seen by an enthusiastic audience experienced professionals a jury of high-flying artists. More than a competition, it is a rallying cry, a merry, unifying moment, a feast of ideas.

Two immovable rules:

1. The piece has maximum 10 minutes
2. A minimum of 3 performers onstage

The suggestion of the call is to expand formats, to remove them from patterns:

”Pull away from the habour, aim for the high sea. Plumb the depths of your mind and ideas. Begin to be free.”

Where and when?

The competition will be held on 25 and 26 June 2022 at Théâtre de la Ville – Espace Cardin – Paris.

How to enrol and participate?

Through online registrations here, until 31 December 2021. For rules and regulations, click here.

Choreographer Andreea David, together with the TechnoFields collective, is expecting the public at Văcărești Natural Park for a series of encounters in nature, during which forms of collective dance will be passed through the filter of contemporary art, to be transformed into landscape. microRave – Attempts to become a landscape is an invitation to forever disappear from the anthropic framework, taken over by the energy of the leaves that make their way through the cracks of the concrete slabs or by the shoot that pierces the ruins of the forgotten districts.

Is it possible for the Other, and everything around us in general, to become a sensitive extension of who we are? Is it possible to project ourselves beyond the perimeter of our own body through voice, sound and gaze? Can we deconstruct individuality so that once dissolved in what we now call nature, can we live as part of an organism larger than ourselves? Or, at the opposite end, to become no man’s land, perhaps the emptiness between entities, in what remained unshaped in the anthropic environment? Possible answers alternate in the trance of a repetitive dance, a reflex-response to the ritual rhythm of the music. You don’t control your body, just dance! What would it be like to perceive yourself as always being there, as if the word landscape never existed? A group of people transforms into a unitary and permeable organism, as the former individuals lose their socio-cultural identity, becoming nobody. It then loses its contours, to gradually turn into a landscape. The dancers merge with the plant density, the voices of the plants and the songs of the birds, with discreet noises that become sound textures and electronic music sequences. We mix with the place where the landscape breathes, speaks through countless voices, moves, sits, flattens, creates volumes, vibrates. We lose ourselves in an objective space, which nullifies any socio-cultural attribute, receiving us as simple forms of life, along with trees, grass, snails or birds. The dance floor transforms into a perimeter of infinite possibilities of transformation, and reproduces the mechanics of salvation. Far from technological tyranny, the dancer abandons themselves in a generic and impersonal desert, trust-falling into motion.

In the Văcărești delta there is an edge, and its concrete slope with 21 degrees of inclination. There is spontaneously growing vegetation in the 30 years since plans to build a reservoir were abandoned. The vegetation outlined a meadow. From the perspective of the edge, the contoured glade looks like a scene. The TechnoFields collective will refer to the “nature scene” by investigating its “nature”. In a plant-dream, in which the voices of plants are heard, they mix in rhythms and take control. Using specialized equipment, Sillyconductor will take over and process the electrical impulses of the surrounding plants, which will then be transform into musical notes, rhythm, bass and arpeggios, essential elements of electronic dance music, creating a self-sustaining generative system.

The TechnoFields meeting will take place on Saturday, October 16, at 15.00.
Access to Văcărești Natural Park is from Asmita Gardens.
The interventions of the artistis are non-invasive and will not have a negative impact on the landscape, species or habitats.

Artists: Andreea David, Maria Baroncea, Eliza Trefas, Oana Maria Zaharia, Maria Mora, Sânziana Pintean, Eve Cousin, Sillyconductor

The costumes are provided by Andrei Dinu, Paula Dunker and TechnoFields.

Supported by
arta, The Institute, Radio România Cultural, Radio București FM, IQAds, DigitizArte, Teletext, Revista Arta, Modernism.ro, Zile și Nopți, Daily Magazine, Feeder, Spotmedia, IQool, Smark, Ziarul Metropolis, Telekom Electronic Beats, Centrul Național al Dansului din București, Revista Zeppelin și Munteanu

Perform Europe is an EU-funded project which aims to rethink cross-border performing arts presentation in a more inclusive, sustainable and balanced way. Sustainability through innovation is the first publication of Perform Europe. This report brings together the main learning points we have drawn from the Perform Europe process, since its start in December 2020. The Perform Europe process so far highlights the urgency to rethink the current system of touring and distribution support in Europe, in order to make it more balanced, sustainable and inclusive.

The report calls attention to the current issues and imbalances in the European system of cross-border touring and presentations of the performing arts, and articulates a vision on how to bring change.

To view the full report, click here.

For the article source, click here.

In October, the National Center for Dance Bucharest launches the project (In)Visible Bodies and Stories.

Until recently, the history of Romanian dance seemed to be more about the sum of absences and invisible gestures, rather than a series of material evidence. However, since its establishment, the National Center for Dance Bucharest (CNDB) has carried out projects to recover Romanian history and to reactivate the collective memory. Some of the remaining traces were recovered from personal archives and carefully inventoried in the CNDB Archive. The project “(In)visible bodies and stories” takes place during October and is a continuation of the project “Dancing walks”, in which CNDB invited people to go for a walk with dancers who guided them through several transformative exercises regarding the relationship with one’s own body, with space and the environment.

“(In)visible bodies and stories” adds a new dimension and offers the audience a series of performative tours guided by 10 artists/performers in the field of contemporary dance that activate the choreographic memory of Bucharest. Starting from the experience of their own body and the relationship with the city, the artists will guide the participants to the spaces where, over time, dance has made its presence felt in the life of the Capital. The memory of the creators, the energies and stories that contributed to the construction of today’s choreographic culture, will be reactivated by texts, images, enactments and story-telling. The living body thus becomes a mobile archive that connects spaces/places, histories/events and people from Bucharest, who marked the history of Romanian dance. Each tour lasts between 2 and 3 hours and involves visiting three such places.

CNDB is not proposing a historical approach to formal memory recovery, but acts performatively, engaging participants in a process that involves them physically and emotionally. CNDB offers participants a process of questioning their relationship with the city and a series of exercises to activate their body memory. The dancer’s body, seen as a mobile archive, transmits rewritten fragments of history to the participants and inscribes them in their bodies, renewing the ways of preserving, presenting/representing and circulating knowledge.

The artists invited by CNDB to support these performative guided tours are: Denis Bolborea, Catrinel Catană, Simona Dabija, Simona Deaconescu, Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker, Virginia Negru, Andreea Novac, Maria Mora, Valentina De Piante, Arcadie Rusu.

Project co-financed within the program “București – oraș deschis” 2021.

From January to July 2022 PACT Zollverein is offering a residency programme for the development and realisation of projects and productions, which is open to professional artists from both Germany and abroad working in the fields of dance, performance and media art. Residencies are planned individually and include a working space and local accommodation as well as financial support in the form of a weekly grant allowance and travel costs*. By arrangement and subject to requirement, PACT Zollverein also offers its residents technical support. In keeping with its unique structure, PACT Zollverein sees itself as a place of encounter and exchange and, together with all its contributors, welcomes the readiness of others to share their own work processes in open and freely definable forms.

A residency incorporates the following:
― Studio space (from 69 to 173 sq.m.)
― Local accommodation (max. 4 people)
― Period of 3 to 6 weeks
― Weekly grant allowance for all of the residency project participants (max. 4 people)
― Travel costs covering one journey only per participant to and from PACT Zollverein (max. 4 people)*
― Technical equipment (by arrangement and subject to availability)
― Professional technical support (by arrangement and subject to availability)

* Principally, the least environmentally harmful means of transport available should be chosen.

Due to the current highly dynamic COVID-19 situation, we reserve the right to make adjustments to the terms of residencies in consultation with the applicants if necessary.

PACT is pleased to facilitate barrier-free and family-friendly residences by arrangement.

We only accept residency applications submitted via our online residency application process. To access the online application form please go to: www.pact-zollverein.de/en/artists-centre/residencies.

Closing date for applications: 9th of September 2021

All complete applications received by this date will be considered and you will be informed of the panel’s decision by e-mail.

PACT Zollverein – Residencies 1/2022
Juliane Beck
Bullmannaue 20a
D-45327 Essen
residenz@pact-zollverein.de

PACT Zollverein / Choreographisches Zentrum NRW Betriebs-GmbH and its residency programme are supported by the Ministry for Culture and Sciences of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the City of Essen. Tanzlandschaft Ruhr is supported by the Kultur Ruhr GmbH.

For more information, click here.  

Street Art Bucharest creates, together with appreciated artists, such as Serebe and Pisica Pătrată, five artistic interventions in public spaces in the neighborhoods, hosted by the Bucharest Metropolitan Library, Special Gymnasium School Nr. 9, the National Center for Dance Bucharest and The Institute, located at Combinatul Fondului Plastic. Artists and photographers are invited to apply for two open calls, and Bucharest residents and visitors can participate, free of charge, in three guided tours of art in public spaces.

The program produces a printed album and an online map, which presents the latest street art works in the city, both of which will be launched during the group exhibition from October 15 to 23, in Bucharest. The opening of the exhibition brings together two artists from different fields, visual art and music, who will co-produce a live performance which will be broadcasted online in real time.

Artists and photographers are invited to apply in two open calls, and Bucharest residents and visitors can participate, free of charge, in three guided tours of urban art in public spaces. The first guided tour takes place on August 29, from 17:00.

The first open call for murals and street art interventions is launched on August 30, so we invite you to follow the project’s microsite to be up to date with the activities planned for the next period and to get involved: https://feeder.ro/streetartbucuresti

Street Art Bucharest is a cultural project created by Save or Cancel.

The project was co-financed by the Capital City Hall through ARCUB within the Bucharest – Open City 2021 Program.

For detailed information about the financing program of the Bucharest City Hall through ARCUB, you can access www.arcub.ro

The content of this material does not necessarily represent the official position of the Bucharest City Hall or ARCUB.

Partners: Bucharest Metropolitan Library, Special Gymnasium School Nr. 9, National Center of Dance Bucharest, The Institute

Media partners: Zeppelin, Igloo, Iqads.ro

About Save or Cancel

Since 2009, Save or Cancel is a medium for communication and dissemination of arts and culture, promoting and facilitating their role in contemporary society.

The multidisciplinary programs self-initiated by Save or Cancel aim to identify sustainable and adaptable opportunities to (re)enhance the existing through cultural and editorial projects and programs.

The seventh edition of Bucharest International Dance Film Festival (BIDFF), the only cinematographic event in Romania dedicated to dance films, will take place between September 1 and 5, in Bucharest.

BIDFF presents original films that use movement as the main language and the body as the subject. During the 5 days, the festival will present in 7 locations in Bucharest international and Romanian dance short films, documentary feature films about dance, music and performing arts, a VR exhibition, masterclasses with international artists, a dance film laboratory dedicated to young creators, as well as other related events dedicated to the community.

Artistic direction and theme of the festival: Potential Worlds

Art, like the world we live in, is in a continuous transformation. Art pushes the boundaries of the real world and constantly redefines its forms. Just as an ecosystem adapts to change, integrates new elements or mutations, needs regeneration and balance, so does art, in all its forms, seeks to redefine its form and content.

In the last year, contemporary society was taken by surprise by the appearance of some events that disrupted its linear existence and forced it to rethink its actions, the relationship with the environment, the relationship between state and citizen, transnational mobility, cultural identity. We had to correlate actions and ideologies on a planetary level, being forced by global events in front of which we had to reinvent the way we function as a society and question our values of humanity. In the middle of these situations is the body, this “biological vessel” that we try to protect and keep intact, but at the same time it is the generator of change, transformation and progress.

In the face of these borderline situations, art and the ways of producing and presenting art have also changed. Ignoring the crisis and the need for change is like watching a tsunami and thinking it’s just a wave you can float through without worrying about it. The artistic formats undergo some necessary mutations, the film leaves the cinema, the dance leaves the stage. BIDFF questions the current situation and wonders what we are heading towards. What will tomorrow’s art be like, the art of the next decade and, why not, the art of the next century? What can be the new cinematic and performative formats, what topics become relevant when you are forced by circumstances to be aware of borders and how can you transgress these boundaries using the body, cinematic art, science and new technologies?

– Simona Deaconescu, artistic director of BIDFF

For the schedule, descriptions and complete details of the festival events, click here.
For the Facebook event, click here.

The National Center for Dance Bucharest announces a employment competition for the position of head of public relations and communication. Those interested are asked to send their CV / portfolio to office@cndb.ro by September 5.

Job description:

• Identifying and proposing communication objectives, in accordance with the mission and vision of CNDB;
• Developing new ideas in terms of communication, monitoring new communication trends locally and internationally, as well as monitoring the activity of similar professional bodies, trends in the profession and the cultural sector;
• Ensuring the promotion of events;
• Establishing and maintaining contacts with specialized media publications;
• Managing and creating content for the institution’s communication channels (social media platforms, newsletters, articles, press, etc.);
• Providing the process of graphic identity of events and support of advertising materials;
• Maintaining professional relationships with external partners, facilitating the flow of communication with institutional partners;

Job requirements:

• Graduate of higher education;
• Experience in cultural communication (minimum 1 year);
• Experience in content creation and editing, copywriting;
• Good level of knowledge of English language;
• Ability to work with MSOffice, Internet, social media platforms and promotion platforms;
• Ability to adapt to different types of people, interlocutors and beneficiaries of information, communication channels with which they interact or for which they make communication materials;
• Rigor in the performance of work duties;
• Ability to analyse and synthesize, conciseness, accuracy, initiative, creativity, flexibility;
• Ability to meet deadlines;
• Ability to ensure data protection and confidentiality;

This summer, the National Center for Dance (CNDB) is first and foremost a meeting place where differences of any kind, but especially those related to age, social status, training, knowledge and experience become irrelevant, because dance becomes the binder which brings very different types of people together.

CNDB is one of the few cultural institutions that continues its activity over the summer, and in this context launches “Courtyard Dances”, a project in which the yard of CNDB’s location on Mărășești Blvd. will host artistic groups that bring together over 40 independent artists, who will offer to the non-specialized public workshops, games, presentations with extracts from choreographic works, exhibitions, interactive installations, parties and other activities that focus on contemporary dance.

The events will take place every weekend, from the 8th August until the beginning of October.

Discover the “Courtyard dances” schedule!

AUGUST

Sharing practices & dance party by LINOTIP
Date: August 8th
Time: 18:00

What happens when you work on a performance? What is the part that is unseen by the public? Linotip invites the audience to an open laboratory hosted by the choreographer Ioana Marchidan, which will offer a look into the intimate creative process that was the basis of the production, “Humans / Bodies / Images”, with Sofia Sitaru Onofrei, Anca Stoica and Bianca Ardeleanu, three dancers who just graduated from the Choreography Department of the University of Theatre and Cinematography “I.L. Caragiale”. The laboratory will be followed by the audition of several musical fragments composed by Alexandru Suciu for the performances produced by Linotip. The musical audition also opens an invitation for all participants to dance.

Perspectives in motion – workshop, performance, improvisation, talk, with the artist Virginia Negru and her guests
Date: August 14th
Time: 18:00

The freedom to try, to choose and to build are the central elements used by the artist Virginia Negru, who invites you alongside her guests to an experiential event that proposes to expand your own perception. You are invited to be both a participant and a spectator in the following:
– improvisation workshop through movement and dance (60′-80′);
– performative moment of composition by improvisation with Mădălina Dan, Cristina Lilienfeld, Smaranda Găbudeanu, Cătălin Diaconu (dance) and Victor Podeanu (live music), (30′).
– closing talk (30′).

Delazero to Dance
Date: August 15th
Time: 10:00

The Delazero Association invites you to join in for a day in which interaction through movement, ludic spirit, games and playfulness become a party accompanied by Emil Vasilache (DJ).
10:00 -11:30 – Workshop for children aged 8-12 coordinated by the artist Camelia Neagoe;
18:00-19:30 – Workshop for adults coordinated by artists Mariana Gavriciuc and Simona Dabija;
20:00-21:00 – Interactive game (powered by Playstation and the guest choreographers).

SEPTEMBER

Blue Lagoon. Descentrat
Date: September 11th
Time: 17:00

The Blue Lagoon. Descentrat will open the performative space of the National Center for Dance Bucharest in several forms:

5:00 – 6:30 pm – an audio oasis of infusion and mixture in Samer’s guidance
6:30 – 7:00 pm – a story from the animal kingdom addressed by a guest from the Romanian Ornithological Society
7:00 – 7:45 pm – two new drag & beyond shows (queens to be announced)
7:45 – 8:30 pm – a group singing class with Alina Buzdugan
8:30 – 10:00 pm – a group karaoke session

Guests: Samer, Livia Gyongyosi, Alexander Valentine, Rayne O’Plasty, Alina Buzdugan

See You Soon
Date: September 12th
Time: 18:30

In the winter of 2020, Cristina Lilienfeld and Alina Ușurelu spent a month at Perfocraze International Artist Residency in Kumasi, Ghana. This center is supported by a group of Ghanaian artists who, in a few years, have managed to create a self-sustaining ecosystem that hosts dozens of artists each year. The meeting with the art and culture from Ghana shook a series of concepts and visions that Cristina and Alina shared, and in this intense process of knowledge a show entitled “See You Soon” was born.

Time schedule:
Reenactment of the performance “See You Soon” (60′)
Audience talk (45′)
Screenings of the interviews filmed by Alina Ușurelu with the Ghanaian artists who hosted them at PIAR Residency (60′)
Closing discussion / exercise. (30′)

[M]others & What (still) moves us
Date: September 18th
Time: 11:00

On September 18, two projects meet, resonate and create an accumulation of emotional, sensory, motor and relational information.
The first part hosts the Sensuum-lab workshops. Each participant is invited to rediscover new opportunities to dance, but also to feel, to handle objects and to create the first actions that later build behaviours.
The second part involves a discussion between Mădălina Dan and the [M]others team in the What (still) moves us format. A transdisciplinary team of seven mother artists, plus a daughter artist, will perform with Mădălina.

Curated by: Mădălina Dan, Valentina De Piante

So Rave That is Staged – Technofields
Date: September 25th
Time: 17:30

This year, Technofields brings rave and collective dance to the core of its research, as a means of focusing on the city’s abandoned spaces, where major projects fail and where, through their remains, vegetation takes its place, creating heterotopias and new systems with a different space and time. So Rave that it is Staged is a party staged in various rave formulas, which brings to the fore front collective forms of dance, as a means of celebrating the community.

Hosts: Andreea David, Maria Baroncea
Music: Sillyconductor
Dj set: Sinister Exaggerators

”The heat was hot and the ground was dry” – tranzit.ro
Date: September 26th
Time: 18:00

Climate predictions say that in the next 30 years southern Romania will become an arid steppe. There is an optimistic version, in which the authorities will invest heavily in re-creating forest curtains to stop this phenomenon. But in the summer days when the desert wind blows over Bucharest, this scenario seems to be a utopia. Another option is that we will try to adapt to the new conditions, along with the few species that will survive next to us. Artists Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan conducted a research study in the Sahara of Romania (southern Oltenia), where they collected pollen grains, which represent a climate indicator, an organic archive that preserves traces of vegetation from a certain area over time. For how long will there be vegetation on the sands of Oltenia and how will it adapt?

Guests: artists Anca Benera, Arnold Estefan and Professor Florin Stănică, Phd

Mădălina Dan: Arts and crafts
Date: October 2nd
Time: 18:00

The courtyard dances proposed by Mădălina Dan take place in the form of professional and lively meetings and intersections, changes of perspectives, new partnerships and dynamics, with the intention of creating a communication network that converges towards the idea of ​​community, dialogue and choreographic meetings.

Mădălina Dan met Andreea David and Eliza Trefaș in the improvisation laboratory “Perspectives in motion” – improvisation laboratory proposed by Virginia Negru, project that was also present during de Courtyard Dances series, on August 14th. Their meeting generated a creative process and the trio, “Sisters are doing it for themselves”, which will be presented on Saturday, October 2, at CNDB.

Schedule:
18:30 – Sisters are doing it for themselves – work-in-progress presentation
With/by: Madalina Dan, Andreea David, Eliza Trefaș

19:20 – You could be more as you are – work-in-progress
Cu/de: Eliza Trefas și Eve Cousins

20:00 – What (still) moves us, with Andreea David

Project co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The project does not necessarily represent the position of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The Administration of the National Cultural Fund is not responsible for the content of the project or the manner in which the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.

If you are from/ living in Romania, Serbia or the Republic of Moldova and you are a cultural manager, PR manager, cultural producer, cultural journalist or art critic with min. two years of experience, then thel ??????????? ???????? ??????????? ???? (????): ????????, ?? ?????? is for you‼️

Open Call – New Regional Cultural Cooperation is open until 11th August, applications can be submitted on https://tinyurl.com/xdv9e2p3

The selection`s results will be published on August 16th 2021 and the 15 participants will attend:

Cultural Management School in Bucharest: September 14th – 19th 2021, Projects Incubator in Belgrade: November 3rd-7th 2021

For more info go to https://www.goethe.de/ins/ro/ro/kul/sup/aka.html