Curs

A New Contemporary Dance Company

None of the totalitarian regimes of this century had any particular liking for the modern art trends and made them eventually disappear from the area controlled by them. Too free a manifestation of one's personality meant escaping their power. In Nazi Germany just as

Stravinsky Soirée

BALLET OPENING NIGHT AT THE NATIONAL ROMANIAN OPERA The two ballets staged by Alexa Mezincescu in her recent premiere on the boards of the National Romanian Opera in Bucharest, The Firebird and The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky, marked, at the moment of their creation

Christine Bastin - Interview, 1991

A complex cultural program begins this month in Bucharest: La danse en voyage, organized by France for Romania. Six contemporary dance companies from France will come monthly to Bucharest, Iaşi, Timişoara, Cluj and Constanţa. Mrs. Christine Bastin, you are the first choreographer

From The Country Of Jackasses

III. The Culture of Jackasses When an ass leaves his village to go live in the city a wonderful change occurs in him: his asininity leaves the body and sets straight into the soul. In donkey parlance this means the respective jackass becomes cultivated. Thus, an educated

Notes Of A Hypochondriac

The other Monday walking on Victoriei Road I met a friend. It is a well-known fact that today any guy you treat to a glass of wine at Fialkowsky's or who is in the delightful habit of bumming two or three lei from you is called a friend. Last year, this guy borrowed

The Romanian Dimension Of Existence

excerpts Chapter IIIThe Nature of the Being  (…) Anybody who knows this nation will agree that the Romanian is a born opponent. Whatever is proposed to him, his first reaction, the first temptation of his thought is to oppose it. But, strangely, his opposition does not

Imitation And Identity

I will begin by quoting myself. Talking about the polemics between two people whose intelligence and moral stature I admire (the polemics took place, in its major parts, in the very pages of the 22 magazine), I used to say with a certain regret and doubtfulness: On whose

Brief Excursus On A Romanian Paradox

Strangely enough, in all the periods of political, economic and/or military infeudation either to Turkey or to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to Germany or to Russia, or to the Soviet Union, the Romanian Principalities and Romania always nurtured the illusion of autonomy from

The Nature And Texture Of Peoples

 I must admit I didn't quite understand in the beginning why, shortly after 1989, the Western mass-media has so hastily labeled us as suffering from a deep identity crisis. I was downright indignant: after having sadistically experimented Communism on us for half

The Transfiguration Of Romania

Chapter 3Romania's Psychological and Historical Voids If it were true that the Romanian's spiritual disposition does not surpass the one evinced in the past and that the future is not going to uncover any hidden sides to the Romanian soul, then any attempt to

The Mioritza Space

excerpts We have wondered many times if it is possible to find or to hypothetically build a matrix-space, or an unconscious spatial horizon, as an underlying spiritual layer for the Romanian folk culture anonymous creations. The subject is worth the risk of any and all

Musical Summer In Europe

Schwerin Founded by Heinrich der Lowe in 1160, the city today is worthy of its eight-century tradition. It abounds in vestiges – proudly and understandingly nurtured – of a history that is comprehensive in what regards the cultivation of music, too. The notes that I