Miriam Răducanu: Chronicle of a Chamber Dance

The Parkour series introduces themes, concepts and seminal encounters for the activity of outstanding artists in the field of visual and performative arts in Romania, which enabled them to produce an unparalleled body of work.

The series looks at a limited array of artistic projects and experiences, through the use of interview as an unmediated recording instrument. The interview format accommodates the reader with the particular spatial and material conditions of their practice, with the personal beliefs and the ongoing process of conceptualising their work. Parkour thereby distill significant aspects of the recent cultural history, bringing back to the fore the role of memory in capturing the kernel of an artistic time, of an artwork, of a conceptual turn. 

Born in 1924 in Piatra Neamţ, Miriam Răducanu is considered one of the most influential Romanian artists, dancers and choreographers.
Her choreographies fundamentally reshaped the vocabulary of contemporary dance in Romania by exploring the essentialisation of movement, the vivid and unsubordinated interconnection between different arts, thus leading towards an expanding of the notion of dance as a space for syncretism and dialogue between dancers, musicians, poets, actors. By using working principles originating in the German expressionism, to which multiple sources from the Romanian folklore, literature and theatre were added, her performative structures reintegrated classical music or jazz in a groundbreaking manner. In 1968, she initiated the series of events known as the Nocturnes, hosted by the Ţăndărică Theatre in Bucharest. Pieces created in the framework of the Nocturnes were toured internationally in Beirut, Edinburgh, Rome, Santiago de Chile, Brussels, Berlin, Cologne (1969–1977). Miriam Răducanu also played an important role in the rediscovery of the corporality of the actor on stage, through her contributions in the field of theatre. Mentor and teacher of many generations of dancers, Miriam Răducanu left her mark on choreographic pedagogy, teaching mostly at the “Floria Capsali” High School Choreography in Bucharest.

Publication concept and editors: Alina Şerban & Ştefania Ferchedău
Proofreading: Cristina Ştefan
Translation: Claudia Lie
Design: Radu Manelici
Image processing: Aurelian Ardeleanu

Institute of the Present, 2017
English, Romanian 
Softcover
156mm x 229mm