Making of 8 days a week

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In November, CNDB is presenting online 9 video productions that accompany each of the performances that resulted from Dance me to the End of… (exercises, distances, proximities) – a program whereby ten guest choreographers worked along with the first generation of students from The CNDB Academy of Dance and Performance.

Jan Burkhardt (DE) and Sigal Zouk (ISR), Mădălina Dan, Simona Deaconescu, Farid Fairuz, Eduard Gabia, Andreea Novac, Manuel Pelmuș, Willy Prager (BG) and Vava Ștefănescu – were invited by CNDB to revisit works which brought them notoriety, works that, in their time, wrote history in the Romanian contemporary dance.

The choreographers worked with the students of the CNDB Academy of Dance and Performance to bring back the old works, but also to propose new ones. After a year of courses and workshops, the teams that formed went through an intensive process of practice and live presentation.

The whole process was documented by Bogdana Pascal, video artist and TVR producer. Throughout November, CNDB will broadcast these video productions via live streaming on Facebook.

The nine video productions capture Dance me to the End of… (exercises, distances, proximities) in its essence: a revisitation of the recent history of Romanian contemporary dance, as an exercise in training the new generation of dancers and performers.

Through interviews with artists, filmed materials of rehearsals and excerpts from the nine shows, the documentaries presented by CNDB invite you to discover the collective and personal efforts behind Dance me to the End of… (exercises, distances, closeness) – the program through which a new generation of artists is debuting right in the middle of a pandemic.

8 DAYS A WEEK, by Eduard Gabia

8 days a week is the performance created by Eduard Gabia and presented for the first time in 2006 being a co-production of CNDB and Kaaitheater Bruxelles. In order to create the work, the artistic team from back then (Eduard Gabia, Carmen Coțofană, Maria Baroncea, Florin Fieroiu, Brynjar Bandlien and Beniamin Boar) benefited from a creative residency at Kaaitheater, one of the most prestigious European contemporary dance theatres, where they also presented the performance two times.

8 days a week is a performance built on an ingenious practice of movement, which Gabia experienced playfully himself before developing a whole set of tools that he delivers to the dancers for their own use. Nothing simpler, nothing more difficult.

“In the reality of the world around us, our actions are composed of two types of interaction, Gabia tells us. Informational – we have the necessary knowledge for that action. Energy – we know, we have, the exact amount of energy to perform that action. The action is the meeting point of the two perspectives, which in 8 days a week I tried to unbalance, turning each action into a “failure”, into a “mistake”. And from mistake to mistake a normal, natural reality gathers.” (Eduard Gabia)

Live-stream subscription link
The facebook event where you can watch this video production is available here.