ALIENATION

Benno Voorham

Benno Voorham is an international performer, choreographer and teacher from Holland, living in Stockholm since 1995. Since his graduation in 1986 from the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam he has worked internationally as an independent dance-artist, directing his own work as well as collaborating with others in both set and improvised pieces. Together with Sybrig Dokter he started LAVA-Dansproduktion, an international operating association for dance, based in Stockholm. He was a member of the Greek dance-theatre company ‘Wrong Movement’ (1993-2007) and has worked as a dancer/actor at the City Theatre of Stockholm (2005–2007). In recent years he has choreographed several works for children and youth. He is an acclaimed international teacher of Contact Improvisation and Compositional Improvisation. In both his teaching and performance work, he is interested in exploring the creative and narrative potentials of the human body.

Cristina Lilienfeld

Cristina Lilienfeld studied choreography and psychology and constantly searched for the space where this two disciplines meet.

She recently worked with various choreographers and performers, as well as with visual artists and musicians, as she is part of different interdisciplinary art groups.

Her performances, “Lay(ers), “They’re not All Heroes”, “Valiant Deeds” (performance for children), “Moving Fields” as well as many performances in which she dances are still present on the stages of Bucharest and elsewhere locally and internationally.

In 2016 she traveled with Dance Roads programme, touring five european countries with her performance, Lay(ers). In both her art and the workshops she coordinates, Cristina looks to bring out authenticity in every situation.

She became a member of PETEC Association in 2015, an association which produces various types of performances from contemporary dance, to theater and shadow theater, from video dance, to theater for children and improvisation shows. A main objective for PETEC is to support the dialogue between diverse artists and institutions, to create connections between different arts, to make space for communication and experiments. PETEC’s role in education is an important one and it’s visible both through the workshops that were organised by the association and through the performances proposed in the last couple of years.

Founding member, President

Smaranda Găbudeanu

Based on her formal education in theatre acting and puppet theatre, Smaranda’s work unfolds in a trans/disciplinary perspective, integrating today different practices and disciplines.The body/bodies and movement are at the core of all activities, both as the material and the perspective of investigation.

Some of the works she created and/or was involved in as a dancer/performer are Inhabited / (În)locuit (for which she collaborated with 7 symphonic music composers and a quartet),  They’re Not All Heroes – co-created, In Total Balance (dance&technology) by Dilmana Yordanova, Group Choreography by Mihaela Dancs, The Great Scheme of Things (art-pop music show, co-creation), În trup (chamber Opera), After.Life by Sasha Dodo etc, all staged at the National Dance Centre in Bucharest and presented in various festivals in Romania and abroad.

She was curated by Mihaela Kavdanska in Camp Festival for Visual Music, by Jean Lorin Sterian for an Ommen & Amsterdam residency, by Irinel Anghel in E-motional Rethinking Dance residency and by Olivia Nițiș and Ciprian Ciuclea at a WASP residency where she co-created No Apples for One Month instalation. She participated in and also created her own research labs in movement with the support of the National Dance Centre. As an actor she played in different productions in state theatres and underground troups.  

Next to the on-going work on art productions, a main focus concerns practical and skill-based exploration in body-bound practices and knowledge such as, for example, somatic and compositional techniques or contact improvisation.

She attended seminars of theoreticians and dramaturgs as Andrei Lepecki, Sandra Noeth, Mila Pavičević, Angela Vadory and worked with dance makers and teachers such as Jan Burkhardt, Stephen Batts, Cyrus Khambata, Scott Wells and practiced Feldenkrais with Cathrina Choate, Valentina di Piante,  Malcolm Maning and others. Practiced music & dance improvisation with Aldo Aranda and improv theatre with various actors.
She founded the independent company PETEC in 2013 that continues to be supported by national cultural authorities as well as a wide range of project-related partners.

Simona Baciu

Simona Baciu has been practicing modern dance, folk, ballet and street dance since the age of 3, and contemporary dance studied at the National Theater of Theater and Cinematography, Choreography, which she graduated in 2017. She taught and created choreographic material for children and adults from the age of 14, and later set up his own dance troupe dedicated to commercial events. She is currently performing, dancing and studying various techniques and body approaches in the performance and therapeutic area. Techniques to which it has been given the most attention are Contact Improvisation, Gaga, Butoh and Axis Syllabus.

 Simona is the organizer of workshops, residences and retreats of Contact Improvisation, Gaga, Axis Syllabus, Butoh and Sufi Whirling in Romania: “Art Laboratory in Colibita”, “Transylvania Contact Improvisation Residency”, “Butoh & Sensitive Dance in the Forest of Transylvania “,” Poetic Body Retreat “,” Inspiral-Contact Improvisation & Sufi Whirling “,” Art-Continuum “,” Shift Platform “), its aim being to offer Romanian dancers the opportunity to explore and to develops in body approaches now circulating in the world in the area of ​​contemporary dance.

 Simona traveled and studied Contact Improvisation with Sasha Dodo, Sveta Bird, Virginia Negru, Sergey Golovnea & Alexandra Soshnicova, Ulli Wittemann, Mirva Makinen, Elisa Ghion, Lior Ophir, Katja Mustonen, Dolores Marks, Caterina Mocciola, Vega Lukkonen, Giulio Piazzi , Kama Jankowska, Ivaylo Dimitrov, Ekaterina Basalaeva, Adrian Russi, Suzzane Martin, Barbara Berti, Luca Carco Pacella, Stephen Batts. He studied Gaga with Melanie Sorin and Natalia Iwaniec, Axis Syllabus with Baris Mitch, Feldenkrais with Valentina de Piante Niculae and Butoh with Kha Tonetti & Tivi Tavi.

Simona taught Contact Improvisation in Thailand, Timisoara, Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest.
His collaboration with Petec began in 2017 in the “After.Life” project and continued in 2019 with the “Performing School for Children” and Contact Bucharest Festival.

Andrei Petrache

Born in 1998, Andrei Petrache has graduated National College of Music ‘G. Enescu’, specialization solo piano. In parallel, he studied, as an auxiliary instrument, guitar, flute, contrabass, percussion.

Now, Andrei Petrache is a student in the fourth year at the National University of Music Bucharest, specialization Classical Composition, at professor and composer Mr Dan Dediu’s class and in first year specialization Orchestra Conducting, at professor and conductor Mr Petru Andriesei at the same university.

So far he has written over 40 works, covering both vocal and instrumental, acoustic and electronic genres. Some of his works have been awarded prizes in different national and international composition competitions being performed in Bucharest, Sibiu, Timișoara, Pitești, Târgu Mureș, Cluj-Napoca, Moscow, London, Paris, Cambridge, Bruxelles, Jerusalem, among other cities.

He is a constant presence on the concert stages in Romania, with solo piano recitals, chamber music concerts or in different jazz bands and he has won multiple prizes at national and international competitions, from which over 30 prizes are only from soloist piano competitions.