Past/The context of appearance
The year The National Center of Dance - Bucharest (CNDB) was founded, July 2004, there was no other institution dedicated to the art of contemporary dance in Romania. The Romanian contemporary choreographers and performers were much more known abroad than in their own country.
The National Center of Dance appeared due to a campaign designed to impose a necessary space in a cultural context deprived of any constant manifestations of contemporary dance. The campaign was sustained by artists and structures involved in the field of producing contemporary dance.
Present/ setting/ facilities
The Center was founded as a public institution subsidized by the Ministry of Culture. Situated in the University Square, in the very center of Bucharest, where the Romanian Revolution took place, CNDB is located at the 3rd and 4th floor on the north side of The National Theatre.
Thus, the 0 Km of Romanian freedom became synonymous to the new frame of contemporary dance. A dynamic art in a transitional context, with unlimited resources, obtained the most needed official acknowledgement.
CNDB received in administration a former exhibition space of approximately 3000 square meters, which had to be adapted to the new requirements.
Currently, CNDB has offices for the stuff, two rehearsal studios and a hall with a capacity of 180 seats.
By the end of 2005, the temporary general manager of CNDB was the choreographer Ioan Tugearu. In 2006, Mihai Mihalcea became the general manager of CNDB and Vava Ştefănescu – the artistic director. At present, there are 13 employees in CNDB.
Mission
The National Center of Dance Bucharest is an institution whose purpose is to sustain, develop and promote contemporary dance. It is conceived as an open space and as an integrant part of the international choreographic context.
CNDB's programs and projects encourage critical perspectives, the research and the experiment in the field of contemporary arts' practice and theory. It encourages the rise up of an internationally extended platform reactive to dialog, reflection and debate.
Dance season
Created as a dynamic and flexible interface between professionals and the audience, CNDB presents every year a dance season. Romanian and foreign contemporary dance productions and international co-productions sustained by the Center are performed in CNDB, offering a large panel of artistic discourses and aesthetic choices.
Programs
In addition to the every week performances, the Center also proposes projects in which the body is explored in its multiple forms of expression, in relation to a changeable reality. The projects create links between different discourse practices and gather creators from various fields.
Project selections
Every year, CNDB organizes two project selections in order to encourage the creativity, the competition and the artistic mobility. This way, the dance professionals – choreographers, dancers, teachers, groups and companies, theoreticians, critics, foundations and genre associations - can obtain financing, rehearsal spaces and logistic support for their projects.
Workshops
The Center organizes classes and workshops for dance professionals and for the non professional audience eager to get in touch with the language of contemporary dance.
Acknowledgement
CNDB obtained international recognition for its intensely proved mobility in the development of projects. Maison d'Europe et d'Orient in Paris nominated Mihai Mihalcea at the "Paris-Europe 2006" award.
Another acknowledgment came from the Romanian magazine "Cuvantul", which rewards the most significant Romanian cultural personalities. The Grand Prize for 2006 was received by CNDB for establishing a new and dynamic cultural platform and for opening an art that addresses to a very specialized public to multiple areas of nowadays culture.
Sustaining value and innovation, vitalizing the entire choreographic environment, CNDB became one of the most generous spaces of creation, debate and artistic reflection in Bucharest.
