Iris Barbura
(b. 1912, Arad, Romania – d. 1969, Ithaca, SUA) belongs, together with Trixy Checais and Floria Capsali, to the second generation of avant-garde Romanian choreographers. In 1930, she went to Germany on a scholarship and attended the dance classes delivered by Mary Wigman and Harald Kreuzberg, where she danced with Gret Palucca and Rosalia Chladek. In 1937, she confessed to writer Jenică Comşa: “I’m doing well here. I’ve had such a good disposition that I believe no devil can trouble for the next three months. And this is nearly happiness. These German ladies haven’t surprised me a but and I’ll return this Autumn, happy to be doing my own thing.” In 1939, she returns to Bucharest where she opens a contemporary dance studio, while also being present on the stage of the National Theatre, where she worked with Trixy Checais and Vergiu Cronea. Vera Proca-Ciortea was among her students, while the future famous composer Sergiu Celibidache was appointed as chorus master and he would follow her to Berlin after she left Romania for good in 1942. Up to the end of the 1940’s she created stage designs and costumes for various performances at the Freien Volksbühne and Hebbel-Theater in Berlin. There she befriended the Berlin surrealist artist group with which she formed in 1949 the collective Die Badewanne [The Bathtub] named after the performance created together with Alexander Camaro, Katja Meirowsky, Johannes Hübner, Hans Laabs, Wolfgang Frankenstein, Waldemar Grzimek, Paul Rosié, Liselore Bergmann, Theo Goldberg, Joachim and Lothar
Klünner, Werner Heldt, Jeanne Mammen, Unica Zürn, Heinz Trökes, Mac Zimmermann and Hans Thiemann. In 1949 she created the choreography Tanz nach Picasso [Dance after Picasso], inspired by the works of the cubist painter Pablo Picasso. In 1951, she emigrated to the U.S.A., living in Ithaca, New York, where she taught choreography at the Ithaca Studio. Among her students were Beth Soll and Hannah Kahn. She committed suicide in 1969 when she jumped off the Triphammer Bridge into the legendary Ithaca gorges.
Beth Soll
(Ph.D.) began her training in Ithaca, N.Y. with Romanian modern dancers Iris Barbura and Vergiu Cornea and then continued studying European dance at the Essen Folkwangschule and the Kreutzbergschule in Switzerland. She received a degree in modern dance from the University of Wisconsin. She has taught at more than 10 universities, including The Harvard Summer Dance Center, UC Santa Barbara, Hofstra University, the New School and Manhattanville College, where she is currently an Adjunct Professor. She directed the Dance Program at MIT for 20 years. Ms. Soll has performed with the Ina Hahn Company, Dance Collective, and the Harvard Summer Dance Center Company and others, and she has collaborated with many independent choreographers, composers and visual artists. In 1977 she founded Dance Projects, Inc./Beth Soll & Company in Boston, Massachusetts. With her company and as a soloist, she has performed in numerous locations in the U.S. and in
Europe and Asia. Her work has been honored with consistent critical recognition and more than 80 grants and awards. Since 2000, the company has been based in NYC, where Soll presents a concert of new work every year. Her book, Will Modern Dance Survive? Lessons to be Learned from the Pioneers and Unsung Visionaries of Modern Dance, was published in 2002.
“Floria Capsali” Choreography Secondary School
in Bucharest opened in 1948 and was first managed by choreographers Miriam Raducanu and Esther Magyar. Among its contemporary dance graduates are Gigi Căciuleanu, Ruxandra Racoviţă, Gheorghe Iancu, Dan Măstăcan. The choreography school environment also created the ebullience of the 1970’s and 1980’s which made possible the emergence of the Contemp Group founded and lead by Adina Cezar and Sergiu Anghel, as well as the emergence of choreographers Ioan Tugearu, Raluca Ianegic or closer to the present that of Vava Ştefănescu, Florin Fieroiu, Mihai Mihalcea and others. Among the collaborations of the “Floria Capsali” School with the National Dance Centre in Bucharest are, among others, the performances Reenacting Lizica Codreanu (2014) and Rythmodia / Vera Proca-Ciortea (2015).