Unauthorized Movements: English-language performance at National Dance Center in Bucharest

Unauthorized Movements, a text-based show performed entirely in English, will be presented at the National Dance Center in Bucharest on September 27.

The show by Mihai Mihalcea is built on the idea that “history reaches the body faster than it reaches books.” It stars actress Mara Bugarin, known for the lead role in Alexandru Belc’s Metronome, which was awarded in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival.

The show explores how time, labor, the political imagination, and promises about the future continue to shape our gestures, reflexes, and ways of being. It “unfolds like a two-century-long hallucination, in which work, technology, social norms and, more recently, digital surveillance have shaped our lives in ways we’re not necessarily aware of.”

Mihai Mihalcea is an artist, choreographer, and performer based in Bucharest. He co-founded Marginalii, one of the first independent dance collectives in post-socialist Romania, as well as organizations such as the Solitude Project Association and SubRahova/Căminul Cultural. In 2004, he co-founded the National Dance Center of Bucharest (CNDB), a public institution he led from 2005 to 2013. Throughout his career, he has created performances and choreographic works that vary greatly in form, ranging from choreographic compositions and performances to interventions in public spaces, installations, video works, and camera-based performances, while also developing curatorial and research projects. His works have been presented in numerous international contexts by institutions and festivals such as Tanzquartier Wien, Tanz im August Berlin, Rencontres Chorégraphiques de Seine-Saint-Denis, Théâtre Alfred Ve Dvore/Motus, Centre National de la Danse, Paris Quartier d’Été, SpringDance, Kunsthalle Gent, HAU Berlin, Black Box Oslo, and others.

Mara Bugarin is a film and theatre actress based in Bucharest. Her debut film, Alexandru Belc’s Metronome, was awarded in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Festival. Since then, she has starred in several short and feature films in Romania and Germany, including Of Love and Demons, directed by Leonardo Cariglino, Export Only, directed by Cristina Iliescu, and Moromeții 3, directed by Stere Gulea, among others. She is a two-time nominee at the Gopo Awards, the Romanian film awards, for her roles in Metronome and Moromeții 3. She also received the Leo Șerban Award at Transilvania IFF for Outstanding Emerging Artist in Cinema.