Caleido Multicultural Performing Arts Festival

The 4th Caleido Performing Arts Festival was held in Bucharest between the 21st and the 25th of May

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România Internațional, 19.06.2021, 12:38

The
4th Caleido Performing Arts Festival was held between the 21st and the 25th of
May and included 20 independent theatre, dance and performance productions, 7
of which own productions, and 4 premieres. The fourth edition of the festival
was aimed at extending interdisciplinary, intercultural and inter-ethnic
dialogue as part of the series Caleido Talks. There were also podcast talks that
approached the theme of the festival: society seen multilaterally, through the
filter of stereotypes, relations, women, communities and recent history. This year,
the artistic director of the festival was Andreea Novac, an independent artist,
choreographer and performer.

It’s the first edition in which I’m involved from
this perspective, of the person that does the artistic selection. The previous
editions were held under the same theme of diversity and multiculturality and,
from what I learnt from the initiators and organizers, the festival started out
of a need, the need to bring together, in the same space and context, extremely
diverse performances. The idea was for these shows to be presented in the same
place, for the audience to be able to create connections and to observe the phenomena
that the artists focus on, and therefore have various perspectives on the same
thing. I am a choreographer, and in 2019 the Caleido Festival produced a show
that I worked on together with actor István Téglás. And because
those who organized the festival two years ago liked the performance, they
promised that at this edition I would develop the event in the dance and
performance area. I accepted because I liked the idea very much, especially since
I don’t believe that art must be specialized, to be just dance or theater.
I believe that a show can be a mix of arts and from this point of view, Caleido
was the right platform, the platform that helped me work with various means and
options.

Andreea
Novac also told us about the four productions of the Caleido festival, one of
the goals of which was to draw an alarm signal on the uncertain and unstable
situation of independent theatre and performing arts in general:

I
also worked with the organizers’ proposals and I launched two open-calls for projects
for this edition. One for shows guests to the festival, and another one for
shows to be produced during the festival, which is extremely important for
Caleido. Caleido produced in 2020 four shows, which is a lot for a festival and
for a year as difficult as 2020 was, and this year we have the premieres. As for
the call for projects, I wanted very much to bring to the festival performances
from outside Bucharest as well. There
are many independent artists in the country, with very strong proposals and I
wanted to know their intentions and, if possible, to bring them to the festival
and produce these four shows. In brief, I gave a free hand to Paul Dunca/Paula
Dunker, a Queer activist who established a team that made a show titled Adoration
for Radical Performance. It’s a show about the Voguing movement (a type of
dance typical of the Harlem ballrooms in the 1980s.) From what I know, it’s one
of the very few shows in our country that approaches this phenomenon quite deeply,
accessing its many layers. There is a personal level in the show, but also lots
of information about Voguing, which in our country is not known. It’s a
performance worth watching, which fills you with energy, extremely beautiful
visually and easy to welcome by the audience. This year’s edition of Caleido
has also presented Bildungswoman, directed by Elena Morar, a project presented
as part of our call for projects. It’s a show that looks extremely well but is also very profound, in terms of content. It talks about women and growing
up. I wouldn’t call it a feminist manifesto, but it does have a clear feminist dimension.
Another production presented at Caleido was Libretto Impostura, directed by Matei
Lucaci-Grunberg, the second part of a trilogy. A show that speaks with humor
and irony, and in a very health way, about imposture. (MI)