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Edited by Ludmila Patlanjoglu Reviewed by C\u0103lin Ciobotari<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n There are books one awaits as a major cultural event and this is one of them. Gigi C\u0103ciuleanu: The Dance Man<\/em>, created by critic Ludmila Patlanjoglu and published in Romanian, French and English by the Romanian Cultural Institute and Nemira Publishing House, with the corporate support of Japan Tobacco International and Art Production, is an ambitious and a necessary project about one of the world\u2019s great choreographers. This exciting book delivers him to us from a multitude of perspectives.<\/p>\n \u201cFlying Man\u201d was Romanian Gigi C\u0103ciuleanu\u2019s one-time sobriquet, and Mme. Patlanjoglu\u2019s poetic yet realistic evocation of the name references both his symbolic and physical take-offs. One of the great ambassadors of Romanian and French cultures, he has stood out as a choreographer by \u201cstepping out of canons,\u201d renewing these works through a \u201cpostmodern crossbreeding\u201d and through his \u201cdelight in playfulness, his comic fantasy and . . . ferment of freedom,\u201d through the \u201cstate of emergency\u201d in which he always seems to work, and through the generosity with which he passes \u201con the torch of the profession.\u201d These are exact and eloquent descriptions quoted from Patlanjoglu\u2019s excellent introduction, an essential summary of the pure outlines that make up the man.<\/p>\n His beginnings unfold from his formative experiences with Miriam R\u0103ducanu, \u201cthe Maestra<\/em>, the consummate teacher and choreographer . . . the one who fundamentally shaped me . . . in my . . .\u00a0 high school years.\u201d We then meet him in Nocturnes 9 \u00bd<\/em>, staged at \u021a\u0103nd\u0103ric\u0103 Theatre, led by Margareta Niculescu. The study notes his work even after midnight when he would improvise dances at a students\u2019 club.<\/p>\n In 1972, he left Romania, a country smothered artistically under Ceau\u0219escu\u2019s rule; a move which opened new horizons for him. His exile (or, as he himself terms it, his \u201cdeparture\u201d) was a disquieting time during which, he says, he often recited Romanian poetry to himself, perhaps accounting for the deep and huge sense of poetry that defines the essence of his art. It could be that this particular proclivity for poetry\u2014he writes much poetry himself\u2014was what made him ultimately also reject Paris as a homeland<\/em> and turned him to Europe itself.<\/p>\n What he saw as \u201cfated\u201d encounters are another sequence in the volume, the most important being his meeting with Pina Bausch, who later described him as \u201ca rebel, a volcano of energy, a huge talent with flashes of genius. His attraction towards freedom in dance contaminated and inspired.\u201d He later collaborated with Maya Plisetskaya in his masterful Madwoman of Chaillot<\/em>, after Jean Giraudoux\u2014first staged at the Bolshoi Theatre and then in a long and triumphant tour of four continents.<\/p>\n The five years in which he served as ballet director at the Grand Th\u00e9\u00e2tre of Nancy are warmly recalled, alongside his adventures in the \u201cloft\u201d of that company, where, in workshop mode, he developed a second company. That was followed by his directorship of the National Choreographic Centre of Rennes, where he developed his own Gigi C\u0103ciuleanu Company, again settling in Paris. It was there that he began his long collaboration with Dan Mastacan and Ruxandra Racovi\u021b\u0103. Of them he says, \u201cI cannot work with people that I do not love and who do not love me. What we are doing is so intense that it does not work if you remain only on a cerebral plane. Dance requires total involvement.\u201d<\/p>\n Later becoming director of the National Ballet of Chile, El Banch, he actively contributed to the artistic life of that country for many years. Still another essential encounter was with Pierre Cardin, \u201ca man at the same time very simple and very complicated,\u201d who strongly believed in C\u0103ciuleanu\u2019s talent and offered him both moral and financial support.<\/p>\n And then, he returned home to his native soil and to the people who made it possible, relearning to dance in the Romanian language, to teaching choreography. We find here his musings on the deleterious \u201cinstitutionalization\u201d of contemporary dance, his thoughts about what he calls the \u201cDance Actor,\u201d a term he uses to describe the performers of his company.<\/p>\n The universal relevance of this artist is nothing if not daunting. A dancer, choreographer, visionary manager and exemplary educator, C\u0103ciuleanu\u2014with over 250 choreographies to his credit across the globe\u2014also has an impressive track record of awards and accolades. Most comment on the humanity of his work, a characteristic of the man behind the artist. Patlanjoglu, aware of this, opts for the portmanteau word \u201cDance Man\u201d even in the title of the volume.<\/p>\n The visual content of the volume is also quite remarkable (graphics by Bogdan C\u0103p\u00eelnean), incorporating real information about the extraordinary range of movement C\u0103ciuleanu explored at various stages of his work. Personal images alternate with professional ones, reflecting the perpetual interplay between his amazing life and his impressive art. Each chapter is also poetically and expressively announced by C\u0103ciuleanu\u2019s own drawings.<\/p>\n In the end, this volume is an exceptional cultural gesture by Patlanjoglu, <\/strong>which offers a generous portrait of a complete Artist. Gigi C\u0103ciuleanu, equally earthly and celestial, dances on the pages with the same grace that he creates dances on the stage: carved images \u201cmade up of fragments of life, of fragments of body, of shreds of dreams and drops of abyss.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>216 pp.\u00a0 Bucharest: Romanian Cultural Institute, in association with Nemira Publishing
\n<\/strong>In Romanian, French and English<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2018\/11\/Photo-1-CS18-Bks-dance2.jpg?resize=400%2C513&ssl=1\")
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