This year, on November 2 we celebrate World Ballet Day! The organizers, The Royal Ballet and The Australian Ballet announced that will be an impressive number of events streamed online, including shows, rehearsals, workshops, interviews with great choreographers and dancers.
World Ballet Day returns for its ninth year, giving you an insider’s view into dance companies around the globe. See morning class and rehearsals, get a sneak peek of upcoming performances and see ballet’s biggest stars at work. Fill your day with dance, streamed for free across six continents.
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Happy World Ballet Day with Cristina Todi, Ballet Department Coordinator of the Romanian National Opera in Iași
“In the 21st century, the art of movement resizes its concepts regarding corporeality, and the term choreography is often misinterpreted. The obvious references from the spectacular arts, but also from sports activities (such as: gymnastics, sports dance, social dance, more recently also in underwater swimming, etc.), still generate great confusions related to the very origin of the movement, concretely, of the non-verbal language and implicitly of the role of choreographic art in the transmission and decoding of messages. These uncertainties have their origin precisely in the interrogations born from the investigation and use of bodily possibilities to emit various information, extrapolating the result to the artistic act. In this context, stage artists absorb and adhere to theories taken from the area of psychological, physical or metaphysical perceptions which they harmonize through corporeality in a stylistic unity, specific to each individual creator.
The Romanian cultural paradigm being a modernist one, it joins at an alert pace the trends of exploiting choreography in the space of the performing arts. The artists involved in the creative act are usually integrated in various professional projects and have enough courage to join the avant-garde currents. Preoccupied with building their own context, maintaining the idea of a new type of dance: modern, innovative art, etc., the fact that the center of the discourse remains movement is sometimes lost. Being as if permanently in a crisis of defining an artistic identity, they forget that the element the primary thing that redefines the concept and rebalances the method of transmitting the message is the movement.
The awareness of the existence of this complex universe that determines the interpenetration of concrete elements with those of a metaphorical nature, the new understanding of the expressiveness of the human body and its multiple possibilities of transmitting the intended message, leads the creators towards the recovery of the primordial dimension of the relationship gesture – action – through symbols and elements treated in -a specific manner for each artist. The artistic melange we witness today is produced thanks to the complex phenomenology also generated by … movement. Unprecedented creative freedom results precisely from the fusion of ideas. The flip side of the medal is the risk of canceling the vital coexistence of the gesture, message, and the transmitted emotion.
In essence, we can face the use of an oversaturated choreographic language in combinations of postures, virtuosic steps or an overabundance of acrobatic elements, which nullify the very human, deep and real emotion that the artistic act relies on.
We often forget the Aristotelian stories that bring theater, music, dance and visual arts together in a unified work; their denial brings us closer to the sports disciplines, because in the shadow of any artistic performance there is the indispensable binder of genres. The effervescence triggered by the often antagonistic energies of the new aesthetic currents generates variable styles and techniques, philosophies, visions and differences in artistic conduct that influence performance theory centered on interculturalism.
However, no matter how much the world changes, man, in his essence, remains the same, and natural evolution has not structurally modified his source, base or matrix that determines the flow of his movement. Even if the work of decoding the mechanisms and needs of human actions is arduous to research, even if the imperative of virtuosity can sometimes lead us to excesses in the choreographic plan, time will tell its point of view with vigor.”, Doctor Professor Cristina Todi, choreographer, professor of arts and Ballet Department Coordinator at Romanian National Opera in Iasi, is a prominent representative of Romanian choreography
Ms. Doctor Professor Cristina Todi, choreographer, professor of arts and Ballet Department Coordinator at Romanian National Opera in Iasi, is a prominent representative of Romanian choreography
Romanian National Opera in Iași was founded on the 3rd of November 1956, the inaugural concert being “Tosca” by G. Puccini. Its founding corresponded to an elder will of the public, initiated by the tours of the Italian, German and French operetta anssambles, during the 19th century. After the founding of “Conservatorul de muzica si declamatiune”, they tried with different productions (opera aria, fragments and after 1900 even entire operas), continuing with trying to found a stable opera (in 1942 and 1944 – unaccomplished because of the conditions imposed by the war). However, these came to reality by the act dated the 3rd of November 1956, which marked the founding of the opera; the main merit is to be attributed to professor Ioan Goia, the manager of the opera between 1956-1965.
Up to the present time, The Opera has gone through more developing stages, several generations succeeded and presented to the public the majority of the opera, operetta and ballet titles, from the national and world-wide repertoire. Here are some of the personalities whose names are related to the institution:
Radu Botez, prime conductor of the institution between 1956-1977 and considered to be one of the great Romanian opera and symphonic concerts conductor, in our country and abroad; teacher at the Music Academy from Iasi. Ion Iorgulescu, lyric-spint tenour between 1956-1974; he excelled in roles from “Aida”, “Carmen”, “Tosca”, “Butterly”, “Othello”.
Ion Baitanciuc, prime ballet-dancer between 1956-1977; the entire ballet repertoire. Dimitrie Tabacaru, artistic director between 1956-1985, manager of The Opera between 1974-1982. Reference works: “Manon Lescaut”, “Le Marriage de Figaro”, “Don Carlos”; he staged opera works in the country and abroad; teacher at the Music Academy from Iasi. Bella Balogh, coregrapher; worked between 1958-1977 and 1980-1986; he made the majority of the ballet works.
Mioara Cortez, spint-soprana; she works for The Opera since 1980; she interprets the most important specific roles: “Tosca”, “Boema” “Aida”, “Norma” etc; she performed numerous concerts in the country and abroad; teacher at the Music Academy from Iasi.
Corneliu Calistru, conductor; he works for The Opera since 1965; he is the manager of the institution since 1991; he approached the entire opera, operetta and ballet repertoire (Giacomo Puccini, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi, Charles Bizet, Pietro Mascagni, Rugierro Leoncavello); symphonic concerts in the country and abroad; teacher at the Music Academy from Iasi.
Opera Româna Iasi develops its activity, since 1956, in the building of Teatrul National Iasi (The National Theatre Iasi), a historic monument that had been built between 1894-1896 by the Viennese architects Felnner & Helmer (they also built the operas from Vien, Zagreb, Odessa, Cluj). At that time the major of Iasi was Nicolae Gane.
