From 27 September to 19 October, the National Center for Dance Bucharest and Rezidența9 are organizing a large-scale exhibition dedicated to choreographer and dancer Miriam Răducanu and the impact she had on several generations of artists. The opening will take place on September 27 at 19:00 at Rezidența9, and until the end of the exhibition period, the public will have the opportunity to participate in a series of events.
The exhibition presents the artistic career of the choreographer over a period of half a century and brings together for the first time photographic and videographic documents, which have been recovered from public archives in Romania (TVR Archives, ANF and the archives of the Țăndărică Theater, Bulandra Theater, Jewish State Theater, Small Theater), as well as from the private archives of those who collaborated with Miriam Răducanu from the 1960s until today, such as Gigi Căciuleanu, Raluca Ianegic, Liana Tugearu or Ioan Tugearu, and from the choreographer’s personal archive.
The National Center for Dance in Bucharest (CNDB) and Rezidența9, in partnership with UNITER /UNITER, bring together, in the generous space at 32 I. L. Caragiale Street, the voices of over 10 artists from various cultural fields who have collaborated with Mrs. Miriam Răducanu.
The opening of the exhibition will take place at Residence9, on September 27, at 19:00, and during the exhibition period there will be a series of events: guided tours, film screenings, performances and presentations.
The video montage “Miriam’s SenZe”, based on a concept by director Alexandra Gulea, is among the works on show at the exhibition and is being premiered. On September 28, from 19:00 there will be a discussion with the director, and on October 5 the whole artistic team behind the video will be present.
On Friday, October 4, from 8pm, there will be a performative event (as part of the White Night of Galleries / NAG), a reconstruction of choreographer Miriam Răducanu’s piece “Genesis”. The reinterpretation by choreographer Mădălina Dan was commissioned and presented by the Present Institute in 2019 as part of the exhibition “24 Arguments. Early connections in the Romanian neo-avant-garde 1969-1971” (November 2019 – February 2020, National Art Museum of Romania). Idea and research: Alina Șerban; research and artistic direction: Ștefania Ferchedău. The performance is followed by a Q&A.
The documentary film “Without Expectations”, presented at the exhibition, will be accompanied by a Q&A with the director Mircea Sorin Albuțiu, on Sunday, October 6, at 19:00. The film is the culmination of an encounter between dancer and choreographer Miriam Răducanu and photographer Mircea Sorin Albuțiu, who spent eight months in 2017 working together on a jazz theme inspired by a 1959 Miles Davis video recording from Robert Herridge’s studio in New York.
To end the exhibition, on October 19, at 12:00, the round table “Miriam Răducanu. A distruge pentru a recrea” in the exhibition space (with the support of UNITER/ FNT), with special guests Gigi Căciuleanu, Mariana Mihuț, Raluca Ianegic, Vava Ștefănescu, and the discussions will be moderated by Michaela Michailov. The round table will be followed by the performance created by Miriam Răducanu, with Lari Giorgescu – Poezia visului (excerpts).
The whole event with the artist’s creation at the center will conclude with the performance NOCTURN, conceived by Gigi Căciuleanu, presented as part of the National Theatre Festival, on October 20, 9.30 pm – Izvor Hall.
For me, the art of dance has never for a moment been detached from senZe – Miriam Răducanu
“Before opening the window to Miriam Răducanu’s archive, I am grateful to choreographer Gigi Căciuleanu for this key to Miriam’s senZ, he is the one who put the point on senZ, revealing the concepts behind this saying:
«A word that keeps coming up in working with Miriam – everyone who has worked with her has heard it countless times! – is senZ. With a Z. At first I thought it was a mispronunciation. With time, however, I realized that this way of “saying” was an (perhaps?!) unconscious but (almost certainly!) revealing sum of two concepts: that of senS (“meaning”, but also direction, “vector”!) and that of senZation; but, why not, also of senZuality…»
For me, the encounter with Miriam Răducanu’s archive cannot be detached from this senZ, it is what I have been looking for in all the archiving activities of the documents I have researched. The exhibition is a reenactment of this archive with the senZ that Miriam leaves in photographic and videographic documents, in interviews, in the memory of those who danced with her, who learned from her or who watched her as spectators. This exhibition is a form of active archiving of this senZ. Searching for the senZ in Miriam Răducanu’s archive meant for me first and foremost to discover, as much as possible, the original and unalterable meaning of what Miriam pursued in her creation, the archive of ideas in her dance, but also to reveal aspects of the ephemerality and fragility of what is left behind in dance, of the role of archives in the lives of dancers and their potential in the present for other generations, about the memory of dance recovered in ways that matter for the present and the future. The documents are not mere traces, by researching them, they become traces charged with senZe.”– Corina Cimpoieru, curator
To dedicate an exhibition to Miriam Răducanu today means to make the gesture of inscribing her in the centennial links of modern dance, it means to look at her kaleidoscopically through different research perspectives, which rather than exhaustively revealing her artistic facts, aim to reflect on her artistic trajectory and to understand how her creation has not ceased to form breaches in the order of things and bodies in both dance and theater. It means realizing that the act of looking back is always charged with the present. The exhibition retrieves multiple fragments of meaning from Miriam Răducanu’s creation and signals their resonance with what today’s dance has very much alive in its artistic, critical dimensions and in the vivacity of the performative gesture and the thinking behind it. Miriam Răducanu joins the infinite library of choreographic art, indispensable to any continuation in the field of performing arts today.
The exhibition is the result of a monographic archival research and of some projects to reactivate the choreographic cultural heritage, dedicated to the dancer and choreographer Miriam Răducanu, realized in the last 15 years through individual or collective projects that the National Center for Dance Bucharest (CNDB) has constantly supported in order to recover and reactivate her artistic and pedagogical path.
The exhibition will open on September 27, 2024 and can be visited according to the Residency 9 program (Tuesday – Friday 16:00 – 20:00/ Saturday – Sunday 13:00 – 20:00) until October 19, 2024.
The exhibition schedule is available HERE.
Concept: Corina Cimpoieru and Vava Ștefănescu
Curators: Corina Cimpoieru, Suzana Dan
Curator theater activity: Mihaela Michailov
Guest artists: Alexandra Gulea (video-montage), Vlaicu Golcea (sound restoration & music), Mircea Albuțiu (film), Gigi Căciuleanu (round table), Mădălina Dan (performance), Ștefania Ferchedău (presentation), Lari Giorgescu (performance)
Visual identity: Andrea Nastac
Special thanks: Gigi Căciuleanu, Raluca Ianegic, Denisa Badea (TVR Archive), Gabi Fiter (TVR Archive), Miruna Simion (Țăndărică Theatre Archive), Mihaela Popescu (Teatrului Mic Theatre Archive), Dan Druță (Jewish State Theatre Archive), Mirel Leventer (photographer), Ștefan Theodorescu (Bulandra Theatre), ANF, CNC, Uniter and FNT
With the support of
Foundation 9 | BRD – Groupe Société Générale, Administration of the National Cultural Fund (AFCN).
In partnership with
UNITER/ National Theatre Festival (FNT).
MIRIAM RĂDUCANU: an exhibition – archive with “senZ” is a cultural project co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund – AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the grantee.
Institutional Partners
Romanian Television, National Center of Cinematography, National Film Archive, Jewish State Theater, Țăndărică Animation Theater, Bulandra Theater, Little Theater, National University of Theater and Cinematographic Art “I.L. Caragiale” in Bucharest (UNATC), Cinema Union
Media partners
Radio Guerilla, Scena 9, Adevărul, Agerpres, Revista Arta, Zile și Nopți, ELLE, Ziarul Metropolis, Happ.ro, The Institute, ISCOADA, Revista Zeppelin, Agerpres, LiterNet, Radio România Cultural, Revista Golan, Feeder, Visit Bucharest, Empower Art & Artists
