At the intersection of past and present, the performance LUCKY DUST focuses on the written or spoken word and how it can generate new meanings and connections through corporeality and dance.
The performance explores how history becomes a movement, how a theme or curiosity becomes a movement, what can be said through movement, and what methods can be used to express a personal history through movement.

LUCKY DUST is a Romanian-Portuguese co-production by the Institutul Prezentului/Institute of the Present and the dance company O Rumo do Fumo (Lisbon), created by the choreographers Vera Mantero (Portugal) and Mădălina Dan (Romania), starting from a concept and research by Ștefania Ferchedău, artistic director at the Institute of the Present.

LUCKY DUST starts from a series of writings and performances by the Portuguese choreographer Vera Mantero, dating from the second part of the 1980s and the 1990s, as well as from texts written during the process of working on the show in 2022 and 2023. Thus two crossed solos performed by Mădălina Dan and Vera Mantero were born.

Mădălina Dan, choreographer and performer notes: “Writing is intimidating. What does it mean to document or have your artistic work well archived? What does it mean to be forgotten? Invisible micro-heritage – Macrostructures – institutions, museums, theaters. Only recently have we learned that the past matters, and tracking it down and putting it into context requires a collective effort. My body is an archive that stores a living history of my dances.”

The LUCKY DUST performance is presented in Timișoara on June 28 and 29, 2023 at the FABER Cultural Center (from 8:00 p.m., Splaiul Peneș Curcanul 4-5, Timișoara), in connection with the meeting of the European Dancehouse Network, organized by AREAL/ space for choreographic development, and is part of the national cultural program “Timișoara — European Capital of Culture in 2023”, and in Bucharest – on July 2 and 3, at /SAC @ MALMAISON (from 19:30 – Workshops Malmaison, Calea Plevnei 137C, building B, 2nd floor).

The shows in Timișoara and Bucharest include the screening of the documentary “Let’s Talk about it Now”, 1999, by Margarida Ferreira de Almeida, made during the retrospective dedicated by Culturgest, Lisbon, creation of the artist Vera Mantero from the period 1989-1999.

About the creators and performers:

Vera MANTERO (b. 1966) – Choreographer and performer interested in research, philosophy, and science. Vera is a major reference in international contemporary dance. Her working process is similar to that of an archaeologist or astronomer whose gaze goes deep, beyond the world’s surface to search, find unexpected connections, and decode them, while using the body for experimentation.
She uses writing as a medium to reflect on her work, generate new ideas, and capture in detail a present that evaporates instantly. Her artist notebooks, from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, reveal the route she took to condense her practice into a compositional scheme that is at once concrete, poetic, and philosophical in the layers they incorporate.

Vera Mantero’s performances represented a reference for the emerging contemporary dance scene in the 1990s and were later presented in Bucharest in 2007 and Timișoara in 2021.

Mădălina DAN (b. 1980) is an established choreographer and performer, who evolved into the area of ​​contemporary dance in the early 2000s, creating her choreographies since 2007. Living between different places, cities, and countries, she is concerned with the limitations encountered in systematically documenting, collecting, and self-historicizing her pieces. She always carries an imperceptible heritage inside with which she goes everywhere. Concerned with connecting art and life, she uses various procedures to navigate personal archives and understand how the past influences the present.
Mădălina Dan finds poetry in the precision and concreteness of life, and unexpected humor and irony often emerge in her performances. In her recent creations, she is interested in testing the tactile as an escape from the visible to the invisible realm of the subjective and affective body-reality

Ștefania FERCHEDĂU (b. 1979) – Researcher, book editor, manager and mediator. She employs a detective approach in working with archives, through interviews and creates various contexts in which the artist’s laboratory and work process becomes visible. She is concerned with understanding the internal mechanisms of artistic thinking, seeking and generating unmediated access to the path taken by an idea, a concept, or a text, but also supporting and accompanying the construction site of a work of art.
Ștefania Ferchedău believes that utopian projects are essential for the very existence of the artistic field. In 2016, she founded the Institute of the Present, an interdisciplinary research structure that makes all of the above possible.

About the LUCKY DUST performance:
Based on an idea, practices, performances and texts by: Vera Mantero
Concept and direction: Stefania Ferchedău
Choreography & interpretation: Mădălina Dan and Vera Mantero
Scenography elements: Andrei Dinu
Sound & technical direction: Alexandros Raptis, Alexandru Andrei
Producer: Institute of the Present
Co-producer: O Rumo do Fumo

The production of the LUCKY DUST performance started in 2022, when it had a work in progress preview, in the form of a performative installation in which the choreographers Alexandra Bălășoiu and Alexandra Gîrbea also participated.

Financiers: The project is part of the national cultural program “Timișoara — European Capital of Culture in 2023” and is financed by the Municipality of Timișoara through the Project Center. Cultural project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration.

Partners: FABER, AREAL | space for choreographic development, SAC/ @ Malmaison

About the program and producers:

IP — Institute of the Present (Bucharest) is a platform for research and artistic resources in the field of visual and performative culture designed by Ștefania Ferchedău and Alina Șerban.
O Rumo do Fumo is a structure supported by the Portuguese Republic — Culture | DGArtes — Directorate General for the Arts.

The “Uncensored Act” program, of which the LUCKY DUST production is a part, has at its center the idea of ​​community, action and collective reflection, development and exchange of resources, collaboration and solidarity in the spirit of common values, proposing a path triggered by the history of Timisoara in context 1989 and connected regionally and internationally through the proposed artistic content.

Institute of the Present
The Institute of the Present (IP) is a platform for research and artistic and theoretical resources in the field of visual and performative culture, designed by Ștefania Ferchedău and Alina Șerban. Work formats include research projects, conferences, workshops and residencies, and exhibition files such as “24 arguments. Early connections in the Romanian neo-avant-garde (hosted by the National Art Museum of Romania), reconstructions, or the edition in the print format of P+4 Publications.

Since 2022, the Institute has opened a new direction of action in its work studio in Bucharest, where it dedicates space to some voices from the local artistic community while opening this laboratory to other creators from Romania, inviting them to work alongside the Institute. Through its projects, the Institute of the Present supports the access of new generations of artists and producers in contemporary culture and the interested public to significant knowledge resources and direct contact with personalities and landmark moments of the Romanian and international art scene.

Cover photo: Andrei Vuia