CNDB x Simona Deaconescu

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In November, CNDB presents the work process behind the performances that resulted from the work of the first generation of students of CNDB’s Academy of Dance and Performance. During the last year, ten choreographers invited to the program Dance me to the End of… (exercises, distances, proximities) worked with the students from CNDB’s Academy of Dance and Performance to bring back on stage established works of the artists, but also to propose new ones.

Choreomaniacs, is a work whose concept and choreography are signed by Simona Deaconescu.

CNDB invites you to watch an artist-talk with the author of the work about the whole process behind the creation of this performative docufiction, which follows chronologically the events that marked the “dance epidemic” of the summer of 1518 in Strasbourg – a mass dystopian manifestation, which affected several hundreds of people. Named over time “The Dance of Saint Vitus”, “Lasciva Chorea”, “dance mania” or “choreomania”, the documentation of this event is as bizarre as the manifestation itself; a mixture of humoral medicine, supernatural phenomena, a little mycology and some mythology. For those who dare to skip the articles that make up the Internet wow, the epidemic of dance is strongly infused by the ideas of the Christian Church of the late Middle Ages. The few contemporary researchers who studied it classified the event as a mass hysteria, and some dance theorists even called it an early manifestation of choreopolitics.

This dystopian event – a dance epidemic that affected several hundred people – became historical information through the visions of those who had a voice in the community at the time (clergy, local authorities, theologians, chroniclers). In the absence of any testimony from a choreomaniac, the trigger for this epidemic remains speculation, which has gradually turned into historical truth. Contemporary interpretations also remain at the level of speculation, which (re)contextualizes historical interpretations.

The performance that Simona Deaconescu puts on stage together with students from the CNDB Academy of Dance and Performance, brings into question the way we choose to look at dance, starting from a series of testimonies of scholars of the time, a mixture of pseudoscience, theology and medieval science fiction, in contemporary movements. The emphasis is on the way in which the spread of the epidemic was documented, the events being narrated from the perspective of the one who looks at them, never from the perspective of the one who lives the experience.

CNDB invites you to find out about all these things in an interview with choreographer Simona Deaconescu, who will be live-streamed on our Facebook page on Tuesday.