What impresses from the beginning at Simona Şomăcescu, is an extraordinary self-devotion through dancing, which lights up from within, like a flame, the character's personality. A vast and generous movement, a movement that fills the stage and seems to transform the dimension of the character's soul into something real. Looking at her, one doesn't get the distinct impression that the laws of physics aren't functioning anymore, like in the case of "ethereal" ballerinas. On the contrary, one might think that these laws are being capitalized on second by second, due to that wonderful material creation that is her soul. I believe that Simona's artistic belief is disobedience. The clear expression of her personality and her temperament's fulfillment are the same thing. Believing that she compelled recognition without a struggle is a false idea. She has always fought circumstances and even her own weaknesses. Is it difficult being a star in Romania, nowadays?Being the prime soloist in a theatre, being a star, means acquiring a certain status in society and that's something I don't long for. I understand that it is necessary for people to appreciate you in one way another, they must label you in order to define you according to that label. But I've never wanted that. This is my social status. And I didn't want this social status. For me, dancing is not a job, it's a way of being, it's the need to express myself, that's why I don't really understand this hierarchy started by society. I accept it, but it bothers me, it doesn't represent who I am.Yet you wanted to become a star. In fact, how did you arrive at ballet?It's very strange, but I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when I took up dancing. I think I began to dance in the same way I started to exist. Being the fourth born in my family, my turn to speak or to be listened to was a rare occasion. Once a year, on my birthday, people thought I had to get someattention. And because I couldn't draw their attention by talking, I was either doing all sorts of antics around the house or I would just be dancing, moving. And at a certain point, my elder sister told my mother that whatever I was doing there made sense and mum said: "Very well, you're taking this responsibility upon yourself." And so my sister took me to the ChoreographyHigh School and it was she who took me to my first ballet performances, to my first concerts and exhibitions and it was very hard for me. I couldn't understand any of all that, I remember that particular period as being mere torture for a 10-11 year old. I owe a great deal not only to my sister, but also to my brothers and to my entire family.What is the unseen life of a ballerina like?I could say that I live my life 25 hours out of 24. And that is very painful. It is a bit strange to start talking about how difficult or how easy it gets… I try not to talk about these things. Why?... Because I consider it to be a private matter, it is the same as imagining that at the opening of an exhibition the painter would stay in front of the audience and start saying which hand got numb while painting and I think that's just like taking advantage of the circumstances in order to gain appreciation by saying how hard it was for you to obtain that achievement. Whereas art is not a matter of understanding, but of feeling and if the public appreciates me, that's because they can feel me, we're on the same wave-length and I'm sure that there is also a public who doesn't understand me, who cannot communicate with me. Just don't ask me to tell you about my lab, therefore about the pain of my existence because it is an intimate matter and you must leave something that should remain with me, within me.In everyone's life there are crucial encounters. Were there any in yours?Building up a career depends on the important people one meets. And in this sense, my encounter with the choreographer Gigi Căciuleanu can only be described like this (with the risk of being a bit romantic): before I met Gigi, I had been living in a deep, dreamless slumber. I met him and my dreams started to become real. While I was working on the show dedicated to Gigi at the National Theatre, "Gigi Căciuleanu and his guests", I lived close to the sky and I came back on solid ground only months afterwards. When the show was done. I realized the fact that I knew absolutely nothing about myself as a ballerina, and that gave me a great impulse towards working, striving to discover myself. I could see that direction that I took in my life as a tunnel at the end of which there was a light. You could guess that there would be other doors and other windows, but in my case, I was sure that in that tunnel there would be no other doors or windows. The encounter with Gigi meant finding a door where I thought there were none.Classical dance established certain criteria, just as contemporary dance did, eventually. It is, perhaps, interesting that these two create an inexhaustible source of topics with thousands of ideas that can be interpreted through dance. Is it important for a dancer to experience different forms of movement?Shaping oneself as a dancer requires training for a few years in the style of classical dance, but what is most important is that, on the way, one must have the availability to try and create for oneself new experiences of expression. These experiences can blend very well, but I think it's a matter of spirit; how you plan to relate yourself, as a dancer, as an artist, to everything that surrounds you. The most important thing is to maintain your ability of taking the responsibility of your experiences. Like I said, I, for one, hadn't studied until I met Gigi, I hadn't performed, so I had no real contact with modern, contemporary dancing. I was all the more surprised and it's obvious that it was an important moment in my career. It completely changed my spirit and the perspective I had on my own job, it changed the way I saw myself, which is fantastic.Let's talk about your career now. It was built on classical or neo-classical parts. And I'm thinking about "The Taming of the Shrew", "Ana Karenina", both created by Ioan Tugearu.When one puts a new show on stage, there are usually 3 or 4 casts that the choreographer works with and he chooses the opening night's cast along the way. I like to think, out of respect for my colleagues, that choosing one cast over the others is a purely subjective option and I'm sure that no cast is less great than the others. Each one of them has a valid, personal interpretation. It's a competition we all need, but I've never thought that I should be arrogant just for having been chosen to perform on the opening night. No way. On the contrary, I respect the others very much and I think there are subjective reasons at stake.Is your life somewhat similar to Ana Karenina's?I wish I lived with such passion. It happens quite often that one gets truly inspired by the character one is performing. You get inspired, you sincerely live those moments, because afterwards, in real life, in your day-to-day life, there is no chance of experiencing such things. Perhaps my real life has given me that opportunity, but I was afraid to live it to the full. Well, the stage has given me the opportunity of living it one hundred percent.There's that moment of magic for everyone the stage : the curtain rising. What are your emotions in that particular moment, Simona?The third gong has just struck and there are only a few seconds left, it usually gets very dark, the lights are being turned on only after the curtain has been lifted and that's a moment of such tension… I think it's the same sensation that the parachutists have as they stand on the open ledge of the plane, getting ready to jump. You don't know if you'll be floating in the sky or fall to the ground, crash… that's about it. And a few moments after the show starts, I manage to get used to myself, to control my heart beats, so that my knees don't tremble and I begin to feel all right. I have this feeling that the public and I are one single body and that I'm forcing them to leap into my soul, into my being. I make them cry with me, scream with me, feel the noise of my blood circulating through my body. And that's why the applauses don't exist, as far as I'm concerned. I don't dance for a success of that kind, people screaming and cheering and knocking themselves out clapping.For me, the dream in which I took the public along, that fabulous dream is more important than the applause. It's like somebody entered my room and turned on the light. I wake up and, in my confusion, I'd like to ask that person to let me dream some more.Is there a moment, during the show, when, let's say, you forget about yourself, you forget about your body?I don't know what it is like to lose your mind, but I think it must be like this. When all connections to the reflexes ordered by your brain are cut. And those are moments of complete happiness. There are only flashes in a two hour show, but the feeling is so amazing and it happens so rarely and for such a short time that, when the show is over, it makes you ill. Your entire being is shouting, craving for those emotions, it becomes a very powerful drug that once tried becomes a necessity and I think that's the reason for which we start all over again the next morning. We want to live those feelings again. They're very rare, but, as I said, they're extraordinary.Do these emotions go on even after the curtain's down?There is this terrible, absolutely terrible moment that I will never get used to. In life, there are pains that go away, others that you get used to, that's about it, but it's devastating. After a show, you feel as if the atomic bomb had been launched on Earth and you were the only survivor. I ramble around the house, I kneel in prayers, hoping the phone would ring, I realize that it can't ring at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. And maybe I really wish for someone to dial the wrong number in the middle of the night, some stranger who, in that moment, would be there for me, without saying a word. When I was younger, after my first performances, I couldn't understand what was happening to my body, why it wouldn't sleep, wouldn't relax even though I was dead tired. Unwillingly, unconsciously, you re-do the performance, it's a horrible state of mind. Then and there, you really feel you're all alone on this Earth. I was confiding in someone several months ago, thinking that I would get some answers, but that person told me, in a bitter voice: "Simona, your loneliness is the absolute condition of an artist." You really feel alone in your own house, a house that carries your smell, your anxieties, the creaking of your wooden floor. Even surrounded by all these familiar things, you feel lonely. You feel like screaming. It's like being thirsty in the middle of the sea. It's terrible.But do you find a place where you can pull yourself together?In the middle of nature, I think. And that's not by chance. I think that my greatest Master, in front of which I bow humbly, is Nature. Every time I feel humiliated, walked all over, every time I feel like suffocating and I wish I could say what I really think and I cannot… I can't because I'm afraid, yes, I'm afraid, too, sometimes, it's fear or some other sort of impotence. Whenever this happens, I escape in the middle of nature and I learn how to stand tall and I think that's a lesson that I must practice every day. It's something that, once encountered, gets assimilated, it's like climbing a mountain all over again, and you ask yourself the same questions. The answers are not as important as the fact itself that, by asking, you're unconsciously forced into a re-evaluation which only has two possible endings: happiness or unhappiness. And the only moment when you can do these things are when you're in the middle of nature.I see you have some large bouquets of flowers beside you. Do you like them?I associate flowers with my mother's image. My mother would wake me up once a year, the day when I was allowed to speak and I knew I was listened to, back when I was a child. I remember that I would open my eyes and I would feel something fresh and wet trembling in my mother's arms. It was the flowers she had brought me. Then, when I grew up, she would still bring me flowers. Not necessarily when I'm sad or because of some performance, but because she enjoys bringing me flowers. And that's why I identify flowers with my mother's image, and their delicacy and fragility and the fact that they're in my life for just one day, that's what my mother's image means to me.Do you like offering flowers?I never do it casually. I always offer flowers with absolute love. I feel as if I'm moving a step closer to that person. I give that flower with confidence, because it reminds me of my mother, of the way my mother got close to me. Just like the silence and tranquility of a flower.
by Silvia Ciurescu
