Contemporary dance scene in Romania
- a presentation by Mihai Mihalcea

“It is legitimate for me to affirm today that the contemporary dance is in Romania a relatively new form of show that barely seeks for identity and is not yet absorbed by the public conscience. It’s a fresh, unofficial art that doesn’t resemble anything that the Romanian public was accustomed to and needs a truly adequate critical reception. Even in the presence of a potential and long awaited body of theorists that would bring closer to the public the artistic process through a theoretical discourse, it is necessary that the professionals and the practitioners in the field break the vicious circle of the crisis after the crisis they are in, to become aware of and to analyze their own artistic process, its results and its implications.” (Mihai Mihalcea, “The Crisis after the Crisis”, in the “performative arts. critical positions” dossier, IDEA arts+society magazine, #21 – 2005).

Mihai Mihalcea is choreographer and director of the recently established National Center of Dance – Bucharest . He will co-moderate, with Andrei Lepecki, New York-based writer, dramaturge and professor of Performance Studies, the upcoming Dance Theater Workshop-Springdance Dialogue, to take place in New York from September 4 to 14.

See also The New York Times article No Language Barriers in a Dance Talk Fest, October 10, 2006, by Claudia La Rocco, featuring Mihai Mihalcea and Eduard Gabia.

[Image:  from the Jerome Bel dance performance, National Center of Dance, Bucharest]