The LIKE CNDB Festival
An outlook of the third edition of the festival.
România Internațional, 16.04.2016, 14:00
The third edition of the LlKE CNDB Festival got underway in Bucharest on March 17 and will run until April 17. The event is staged by the National Dance Center in Bucharest. Themed ‘Unclassifiable, the festival brings together hybrid performances and related artistic events — the so-called ‘orphan performances’, the product of various artistic fields. Here is National Dance Center manager Vava Stefanescu, with details on the theme of the festival.
“Why ‘Unclassifiable?’ First of all because this year we celebrate the DADA centenary, one of the strongest trends of the avant-garde. And the National Dance Center very much identifies with this spirit of the avant-garde. The National Dance Centre has always sought to break the norms and boundaries of what a performance means and how a performance is being built. And as of late, we know all too well artists around us focus on very diverse things, things you can no longer frame in a certain genre. Dance no longer exists as an individual performance either. A performance is much more complex if it combines other arts as well, if it intertwines more than one type of discourse.”
Among the ‘Unclassifiable’ performances for which the National Dance Center clicked LIKE this year, was also “SHE is a Good Boy”, a show written and stage-directed by Eugen Jebeleanu, based on the documentary “Rodica is a Good Boy”. The aim of the project is, according to its authors, the staging of a performance that takes up on the theme of intolerance towards minority groups, with the clear purpose of raising the lay public’s awareness over the negative effects of intolerance and discrimination, or at least to raise a few questions. Actor Florin Caracala is the protagonist of the performance.
“It is not a theater performance, it is not a dance performance either. It is, in fact, the story of Rodica, the protagonist in the documentary. It also discusses how we, as artists, identify with her story, with the documentary, with the village of Rozavlea in Maramures County. Rodica is actually a transsexual. What was really shocking for us too is that everybody thinks highly of Rodica in Rozavlea. I think the village sets an example for the whole world. Ask anyone in that village about Rodica, they will tell you he is a good boy, looks after the livestock, sings at wedding and christening parties…Everyone in Rozavlea loves Rodica. We used a few takes from the documentary, but the performance does not speak about the documentary. It speaks about Rodica, about our relationship with Rodica and about transsexuality, about gender identity, but also about gender identity legislation across Europe.”
“SHE is a Good Boy” is a performance produced in Cluj, and it is also from Cluj that the concert-performance “Parental CTRL” joined the LIKE CNDB Festival. The performance was created by Ferenc Sinko, an eclectic artist who identifies with the theme of the festival, ‘Unclassifiable’.
“The show was also staged at the National Dance Theater and other theatres as well. It’s the same as being part of a minority group: if you belong to a minority, you get to be part of the minority, but also part of the majority. You enjoy that kind of flexibility. This is a lot more than being just one thing or another. I am still searching for the genre, the form that best represents me, but for the time being this form is very much diffused, and at this point I like this ‘unclassifiable’ form. I think the name of the show is just a teaser. It was not our intention to discuss parental control or the major gaps between generations. Instead, we chose a more personal line, we each brought in our own history concerning our parents and our relationship with them. We started building on that. We hope those who see the show will take the time to look in the mirror and instead of just thinking about what they see on stage, they will think about more personal things, their own history and their own stories…”
The third edition of the Like CNDB Festival also featured the premiere of Andreea David’s show, “Nude Painting of Dark-Haired Woman,” a show both strong and fragile at the same time, as Vava Stefanescu explains. The project was the outcome of an artist-in-residence programme of the “Fabrica de Pensule” centre in Cluj, jointly with the National Dance Centre. Andreea David is a performer and an architect, and these two sides are brought together in this performance, as she explains:
“I focused a lot on hair, hence the phrase ‘dark-haired woman’ in the name of the show. I wondered about the relationship between hair, which is very closely tied to the feminine identity, and the nude paintings, which always include people’s heads. So I decided to work with these two separated elements, the hair and the head. Those who have already seen part of the performance told me that you can tell it was created by an architect. Perhaps it’s about the relationship that I have with objects, and the way I bring this relationship on stage. It is about how a performer builds, and integrates themselves into, their own construction and stage composition. About how they use objects with which they create a relationship and a painting-like composition.”
The interests of contemporary artists, in Romania and elsewhere, are increasingly diverse. The 2016 LIKE CNDB aims to reflect this phenomenon. With this third edition, the Festival embraces the progressive spirit, and continues to promote critical thinking and experimenting. And, from one year to the next, the public of the Centre grows more and more diverse.
(Translated by E. Nasta and A.M. Popescu)
