Having reached its sixth edition, The International Festival of Choreographic Creation tends to become emblematic of the small sweet town of Iaşi. Somewhat pompously named Eurodans '97, it took place this year in a scenery saturated with pilgrims, guards, strikers, officials, folk marches occasioned by the Iaşi Days (10-14 October) and the celebration of St. Paraschiva. Hosted by the Opera House and the Lucefărul Theatre, the festival was mainly supported by the local SorosCenter for Contemporary Art, by the Ministry of Culture and a few other dance-loving sponsors, being as always organized by its initiator, the dance critic Dan Brezuleanu, also founder of the Romanian Choreographic Foundation. As guest star, Joseph Nadj opened the festival with "Habakkuk's Comments", which I had seen a few days earlier at the National Opera House in Bucharest. Also hors concours, Răzvan Mazilu (this time in a member-of-the-jury position) brought a dance-and-poetry recital on the stage (Oh, this Crossing), where pieces signed Adina Cezar, Ioan Tugearu, and Liliana Iorgulescu were joined with a poetry selection from Marin Sorescu's last volume, recited by actresses Coca Bloos and Rodica Mandache. The jury, led by the head of the FrenchCulturalCenter in Iaşi, director Benoit Vitse, had to face a thankless task due the difficulty of ranking works extremely different in nature, a fact which gave this edition a very wide span: contemporary, neoclassic, jazz dance, theatre-dance. On this account, the solution approached was to emphasize worthy creations for their most representative aspects. Thus the debut prize was awarded to the piece Road by Eduard Gabia, a freshman at the Academy for Drama and Film in Bucharest, section Choreography. No doubt a choreographer still to be heard from, Eduard Gabia needs to gradually discipline his inspiration and intuition more by means of a massive input of cultural and professional information. For reviving the neoclassic language used in Biographies, a special prize was awarded to Călin Hanţiu, a mature ballet dancer and at the same time young choreographer and director of the Romanian Opera House in Constanţa. Born out of the empathy between Smetana's symphonic poem From my Life and the personal experience of the performing couple, Delia-Călin Hanţiu, the work is permeated by an authentic emotional approach, which glosses over the technical or staging imperfections, foregrounding a choreographer with valuable potential in a section which in our country is more on the deprecating side: the neoclassic. Frenchwoman Kilina Cremona secured a prize for the value of her creation Murmures ("Zubori"), performed by two young female dancers from Zagreb and presented a few days earlier in Bucharest, at the FrenchCulturalCenter. More interesting as a personality and a teacher than as a creator, Kilina Cremona allowed her work to hint at her master's influence (Merce Cunningham), engrossed on a delicate temperament, lacking the temptation of the spectacular. Choreographer Sergiu Anghel was awarded a prize for exploring new modes of artistic expression in his performance Barococo Party. His genre, novel in the given context, a theatre-dance combining actors' contributions and choreographic performances updating French burlesque ballets from the 16th-17th century, fanciful and laden with symbols, inventions and literary and humorous cross references, was equally appreciated and contested by the more conservative public in Iaşi. As a member of the company he is leading, "Orion Balet", dancer Romulus Neagu did it again, getting a prize for performed creation. The Festival's Trophy, an inspired statue made by the local sculptor Dan Covătaru, was not awarded. Among the other participants, Sorana Madea made a debut with Together, without you seeing me, where she proved to be more of a cerebral than a spontaneous creator, but with permissive intellectual dispositions. Croat Iva-Nerina Gattin tried in Oranges a subtle play of biblical-mythological references glued over a danced conjuring with the "forbidden fruit", whose value could not be fully appreciated by the public because of the text in English. Ofelia Andrei and a group of students from the ArtHigh School in Galaţi offered an excellent school exercise (not creative, though) in Around Midnight at Birkland: jazz danced with pleasure, a good sense of rhythm, audience-friendly, professionally much more decent than Erica Racz's group "Reflex" (Hungary) who could have only been entertaining in an amateur's competition, with its Seasons on the music of Astor Piazolla. All in all, a diverse program, generous like never before. And everything would (have) be(en) dandy, had the festival not been marred again (for the sixth time!) by countless organizational glitches. It is difficult, of course, for an outsider to judge whether after providing the money the SorosCenter lost any interest in how they were spent. It is a fact that there were various surprises at every stage (accommodation, catering, transport, on-stage rehearsal), that some of the best works were – again – presented hors concours, that the jury, as well as its decisions, were conjured up on the spot, that the worth of the prizes has not only been kept from public knowledge, but has remained unknown even after the closing of the festival (there are cases where prizes awarded three years ago have not been honored!), that the advertising was predominantly local (I could spot no information on the festival in any of the central dailies, not even the two lines in the usual cultural info), etc., etc. We leave Iaşi after each edition telling ourselves that "it can't go on like this" and that "it's a pity about the hard work". We accept this festival because it is unique and it covers a great cultural gap, but since it is now almost old enough to go to school, our expectations are higher and we cannot tolerate such lack of ambition anymore. Without competing with it, it is however to be expected for similar events to appear, at least in Bucharest, and I should be very sorry not to catch St. Paraschiva in Iaşi anymore…
by Plural magazine
