Events

The show Traces will be presented for the first time in Bucharest, during the festival Europalia Romania, thus opening the international tour of the company Ultima Vez / Wim Vandekeybus, with a unique performance at the "IL Caragiale" National Theatre of Bucharest, on January 9th, 2020. The event is organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute, in partnership with the “IL Caragiale” National Theatre of Bucharest and the Europalia Arts Festival Brussels.
The show Traces is part of the performing arts program of the Europalia Romania festival, curated by Andreea Capitanescu.
In his new show, Traces, Wim Vandekeybus returns to the body, to the instinctive reaction, to the immediate energy that dictated the pace of his first shows. Taking into account the contemporary, complex, chaotic and contingent reality of bodies, Traces is not about the outside world, about the culture developed by man, but about exploring the traces of nature that the body has forgotten.
Traces is a rediscovery of a vulnerable vitality, in a world full of technological and ecological threats. Wim Vandekeybus looks back at the insights from the beginning of his choreographic pursuits: the drama of impulses and instincts; at the interplay of energies and intensities. In the overwhelming nature of Romania, with the last virgin forests of Europe, Vandekeybus seeks traces older than man and his memory. Traces is the evocation of an "inner story", the story that takes place before or beyond language and can only be told through the impulses of dance and music. Traces is a search for the traces of nature that the body has forgotten or repressed.

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The Ultima Vez company was founded in 1986 by the choreographer, stage director and filmmaker Wim Vandekeybus. Since its establishment, Ultima Vez has developed its activities as an international contemporary dance company based in Brussels and Flanders.
Wim Vandekeybus was born in Herenthout on June 30th, 1963. After high school, Wim Vandekeybus went to Louvain to study psychology. In 1985, he got an audition with the famous choreographer Jan Fabre who entrusted him with a role in "The Power of Theatrical Madness". A year later, Vandekeybus founded Ultima Vez. His first show, "What the Body Does Not Remember," became an international hit. In all its different productions, Ultima Vez remains true to its own language of movement. Tension, conflict, the body facing the mind, risks and impulses. Each time, passion, intuition and instinct will take a different form in his performances.

Europalia
The International Art Festival Europaliais considered the largest cultural event in Belgium, being organized under the patronage of the Royal Family of Belgium, every two years, in Belgium and in neighboring countries - France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany or the United Kingdom. The Romanian Cultural Institute is the coordinator of Romania's participation in the 27th edition of the Europalia Festival, a large-scale project carried out between October 2019 - February 2020 and implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and National Identity and the General Secretariat of the Government, together with the Association Europalia International, the traditional organizer of the event. The 27th edition of the Europalia Festival is dedicated to Romania.

Translated by Simona Nichiteanu