What if we looked at dance closer to poetry than to the visual arts or theater? Each movement – the opening of a world, a language with its own meanings? Each pause – an attentive wait, a space full of meaning? Each performance – a complete work, equal to itself, without the need to justify itself through the mediation of other arts? What if dancers and choreographers worked freed from the influence of music and textual narratives, armed with the confidence that their artistic language is sufficient in itself, also accessible to the public?

These perspectives will be explored starting in April by an international team of movement artists from Romania, the Republic of Moldova and Northern Ireland, within the project No Reason to Dance?. The first stage will include a conference, an artistic research laboratory and a series of workshops open to specialists, but also to the general public, carried out in partnership with the National Museum of Literature in Iași. The laboratory hosted by the "Vasile Pogor" House will be the basis for a performance that the artists will create together in Derry, Northern Ireland, and which they will tour in September in Iași, Chișinău and Bucharest.

The No Reason to Dance? project was initiated by the PETEC association together with the Echo Echo Dance Theater company, out of the desire to bring to fruition the collaborations that have been going on for several years, of five artists from Romania, the Republic of Moldova and Northern Ireland. Steve Batts is a choreographer and dancer with over forty years of experience in dance practice and theory and the artistic director of the Echo Echo Dance Theater company, from Derry, Alexandra Soshnicova and Serghey Golovnea are a duo from the Republic of Moldova, who have been creating, teaching and dancing together since 2000, and Virginia Negru, together with Cătălin Diaconu, performs, facilitates and organizes dance and Contact Improvisation workshops in Romania and abroad. The five share common artistic perspectives and sensibilities, thanks to a long dialogue and exchange of experience, and are excited by the possibility of bringing their forces together in a larger project.

Between 20 and 29 April, they will work together in a residency/artistic research laboratory, while opening up access to the public (first specialized, then general) to the tools of their working process, through a conference and a series of workshops. The artists will put into practice and debate ideas around the perspective developed by choreographer Steve Batts, according to which dance has its own artistic integrity, supported by the intention to create its own meaning, without being a second language to music or literary narrative.

The first stage of the residency begins on Saturday, 20 April, with a conference entitled "Dance as poetic movement – people, not bodies, armour off, not armour on", given by Steve Batts. The event will take place between 5:00 PM and 7:00 PM, with a question and answer session open to the public moderated by Associate Professor Dr. Călin Ciobotari.

Students, PhD students and professors of the "George Enescu" National University of Arts will be able to get in touch with the principles of this method, with his vision on the grammar and syntax of the artistic language of dance, from Steve Batts himself, in the workshop Making and sharing phrases of movement from a poetic movement perspective, on April 21 and 22, between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM.

Thursday, April 25, between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM, it is the turn of the duo Virginia Negru and Cătălin Diaconu to exchange ideas with interested professionals, within the Dancing Contact Improvisation workshop, through a research on the new possibilities of movement that can be generated when we become aware of the different degrees of poetic tension and dramatic content that working with distance, proximity, touch, in relation to stage partners offers.

The cycle of events dedicated to dance specialists will end on April 26, with the Gravity free point masterclass, held by Alexandra Soshnicova and Serghey Golovnea, between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM. Alexandra and Serghey will propose to students elements of contemporary dance that, although sophisticated and acrobatic, will be approached with great simplicity, so that they become accessible and easy to apply, both solo and with stage colleagues. The registration form for this series of events is here.

A photographic and video diary of the project will be started with this first research experience. It will be disseminated throughout the project on the website of the project partners in Ireland and Romania.

On Saturday, April 27, between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM, Virginia Negru and Cătălin Diaconu will lead the public workshop "Dancing is reading myself in public", in which they will invite participants to look at dance as a practice of "reading" the movements that are born from one's own memory and embodied imagination, movements that acquire articulation

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