Making of Iluzionistele

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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 well-known works of theirs which, in their time, wrote history in Romanian contemporary dance.

The choreographers worked together with the students from The CNDB Academy of Dance and Performance to bring back to stage the older works, but also to propose new ones. After a year of courses and workshops, the formed teams 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: the revisitation of recent Romanian contemporary dance history as an exercise in training the new generation of dancers and performers.

Through interviews with artists, rehearsals recordings and excerpts from the original 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 making their debut right in the middle of a pandemic.

THE ILLUSIONISTS– by Mădălina Dan

“The Illusionists” premiered in 2009. In 2020, the show returns to the stage with a new generation of performers, a mixed distribution between students of The CNDB Academy of Dance and Performance and other dancers from the dance community in Romania.

The performance is an extension of the ludic phase in the first stages of life, characterized by play, innocence and continuous enthusiasm in perceiving and transforming the world. It rejects the automatisms, classifications and simplifications that take the place of magic in adult life and returns to the logics and relationships which make the real and the imaginary, the invisible and the visible, the possible and the impossible intertwine in the undifferentiated thinking of children.

Recreating the performance offers the author the opportunity to assess the artistic approach of that time from a perspective that is more mature, but also to assume and emphasize her identity and feminine reality by researching new ways of expression through movement, questioning stage conventions, compositional methods applied in improvisation, syncretic approaches of expression with movement, sound, objects, text.

The material creates a bridge between the female presences of the original cast – Carmen Coțofană, Maria Baroncea, Mihaela Dancs and the new cast – Alexandra Bălășoiu, Andreea Belu, Smaranda Găbudeanu, Georgia Măciuceanu, Laura Murariu, Virgina Negru.

The Illusionists proposes a game between what is imagined and what is transmitted as form and representation, between what is present or absent on the stage, visible and invisible, abstract or concrete. The magic lies somewhere in the middle, between the performers and the viewers/ receivers and it is an active process, communication being based on overlaps in rhythm, intensity, colors, forms in space, bits of images, emotional state. In the show, the illusion (imagination) is seen as a freedom of spirit, a mystery with its own logic of being, as a free emotional and perception game in which the rational is overridden.

The demarche in The Illusionists is related to understanding the body (perceptive, sensorial, emotional, imaginative, kinaesthetic) as the main driver for creativity, the one that “builds” new worlds with each new experience, image, story. (Mădălina Dan)

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The facebook event where you can watch this video production is available here.