The "Spotlighting Timișoara's Heritage through Dance" project has come to an end

Timișoara is a symbol of multiculturalism, a generous city with many stories that deserve to be brought to light and artistically valued, so that they will later remain imprinted in the collective memory. The stories of the city, so elegantly told in dance steps, reached the hearts and souls of the Timisoara audience of all ages (over 1500 spectators).

The shows were born from the desire to innovate the way the city's cultural heritage is presented to the general public. The idea was to do this in a more attractive, dynamic and artistic way, so that the wonderful stories of the old Timișoara are also interesting for the younger generations, less aware of what they inherited and what they should admire and preserve.

The "Spotlighting Timisoara's Heritage through Dance" project, financed by the Timișoara City Hall through the Project Center, represents the continuation and merging of the previous projects: "Dancing through heritage buildings", of the Magnum Sports Dance Club Association and "Spotlight Heritage Timișoara", of the Polytechnic University, in collaboration with the National Museum of Banat. The events within this project were organized under the auspices of Timișoara 2023 – European Capital of Culture.

"For us, it is a great joy and honor that we have managed, through these four shows, to promote and capitalize on the material cultural heritage of this city, through the artistic and digital augmentation of the historical Iosefin, Fabric, Elisabetin, and Cetate neighborhoods", said the representatives of the Timișoara Polytechnic University.

See the interview with the initiator of Spotlight Heritage Timișoara, dr.ing. Diana Andone, about this project, below:

The historical and architectural documentation made through the "Spotlight Heritage Timișoara" project was happily intertwined with the choreographic experience, digital technologies and augmented reality.

"For us it was a joy to continue our 2021 project and to customize it for the architectural heritage of Timisoara. We managed to revitalize stories of our city through our dance performances and, thus, create a special emotion, specific to choreographic art. Dance and heritage buildings highlight each other and create a unique experience for both dancers and spectators. We chose representative spaces in the city and turned them into beautiful performance scenes," declared Diana Avram, from the Magnum Sportive Dance Club Association.

See the interview with Diana Avram, from the Magnum Sports Dance Club Association, about this project below: 

All this led to the creation of complex shows, based on scenarios that departed from real stories. The stories of four ladies, living in the four neighborhoods (Iosefin, Fabric, Elisabetin and Cetate) of the city on the Bega river, were brought to life through dance and technology.

"What is the connection between a museographer-art historian, the memory of the city, digital technology with AR elements and the fascinating world of dance? These parallel worlds met in the four theater-dance performances, inspired by the literary texts and interviews that were the basis of the museum exhibitions about the daily life and histories of the many neighborhoods of Timișoara. Adapting the scenarios for these performances from a novel (Iosefin), a diary (Elisabetin), the memoirs of an octogenarian (Fabric) and an interview (Cetate), I wanted to find the lost time, thinking of those written by Michael Ignatieff: "What we can know about the past and what we want from it are two totally different things!” says Marius Cornea, museographer at the National Museum of Banat.

See the interview with Marius Cornea, museographer at the National Museum of Banat, about this project below: