Section Guest Editors: Margareta Sörenson (Sweden) and Octavian Saiu (Romania)
Nothing comes of nothing. . . . Even the most contemporary forms of dance look back to the long history of this art form, as well as to the recent decades of finding new approaches and establishing new patterns. The Special Issue on Dance includes a series of interviews with dance artists. It aims to provide a multi-perspective on how dance has become such a great partner of the other performing arts at the beginning of the 21st century. American postmodern choreography has taken the lead in world dance for a long time, and perhaps no figure has been more influential than Martha Graham, as Lissa Tyler Renaud’s interview with Marnie Thomas Wood proves. Today, dance all over the globe reflects new aesthetic trends in ever changing shapes, and often with deep political and social implications. This is the case in Chinese contemporary dance, as suggested in the three interviews we are publishing by Peng Tao. Contemporary African dance has become a true expression of identity, as Arnold Udoka declares in his conversation with Emmanuel Dandaura: “With migrations into cosmopolitan settings, dance has become the symbol of ethnic identification.” In his spirited responses, the Romanian-born global choreographer, Gigi Caciuleanu, explains his highly personal approach to dance, as an expression of self in a constant dialogue with others. It seems that in the world of movement nothing is new, and yet everything is new.
Margareta Sörenson, president of IATC, is a Swedish theatre and dance critic, and a writer and researcher in dance history. She has written for the daily national paper Expressen since the early 1980s, and for the Swedish dance journal, Danstidningen, in addition to writing a number of books on the performing arts, the latest on Mats Ek, with photographer Lesley Leslie-Spinks. Her special interests in dance and puppetry have often led her to the Asian classical stage arts and increased her curiosity about contemporary ones.
Octavian Saiu, Adjunct Secretary General of IATC and President of the Romanian Section – Theatre Studies of IATC, holds a PhD in Theatre Studies and another one in Comparative Literature. He has published articles in several international journals, as well as eight books on theatre. He received the Critics’ Award in 2010 and the Award of the Union of Theatre Artists (UNITER) in 2013. Actively involved in various international festivals around the world, he has chaired talks and seminars at Edinburgh International Festival and Sibiu International Theatre Festival. His most recent publication in English is the monograph, Hamlet and the Madness of the World (2016).
