Interview with Adina Cezar

Interview with Adina Cezar

There was in 1965 an opening up in the cultural field. This allowed Stere Popescu, a choreographer without a traditional classical background to enter as a choreographer at the opera where he was performing character roles in the classical ballets.

Stere Popescu was a poet and an architect. He was discovering and exploring new movement languages. He was an idealistic person with high ideas about the free world. He was jewish, homosexual, universial and a spiritual person. A real man. All of this helped him, inofficially, to get the oportunity to create The Hammer Without A Master for the opera.

Music:
-The first meeting with Boulez was really a shock. Boulez was really hard.
”The music sounded like I was in the kitchen and something was broken”

-It was impossible to take the mood from the music.

-In order to work with the music, we listened to the different musical frazes with Cornel Cezar on the magnetophone (reel to reel?), Stere showed us the movement frazes, and then we repeated the movements/steps over and over until we knew them.
Respecting every sound, every pause. Like a machine.

-Recorded music for the rehearsals. Live music for the performances.

-Characters: Fata Urata si Sensibila (Ugly and Sentitive girl) Adina Cezar
Omul cu Cicatrice (Scarred Man) Petre Ciorca, Amato Cociulescu
Omul Cotidianu (Everyday Man)/Omul de Fier (Iron man) Adrian Georghiu
Cel mai frumoase fata din lume (the most beautiful girl in the world)
Omul Cuier (Clothhanger man) Ion Tugiaru

Costumes: -The Most Beautiful Girl In The World had a costume that was like a bird..
The dress until her feet.. (shows with her hands how the dress was out from her hips). You can’t see her legs.

Movements:
-There was no improvisation at the time. Stere was developing the characters and he liked to work with how you look. The dancers were working like puppets. No freedom, like a machine. Not frazed. Incontinous. Because he was an architect, everything was like in a design. It was a mixage of different moods of arts.

-Fata Urata si Sesibila had to hold a 4th arabesc in 90 degrees angle. ”If you’re asking what was happening to me, I can’t remember because I was not lucid. I was like in a passion.”

Omul Cotidianu/de Fier was like a machine that take and eat everybody. A metaphore of the society that eat you.

-The Most Beautiful Girl In The World had to move all over the space in grand pliée,
like a georgean dancer, dancing low on the floor, toc toc toc toc toc toc toc toc. Very special in images. Very diffecult.

-Duett between Fata Urata and Omul Cicatrice was for the rumanian dance sceene like an atomic explotion.

Dramaturgy:
- The Libretto/the storyline was like this; the different coupples were intimate with eachother in the first part of the piece. The Ugly and Sensitve with Scarred Man, Omul Cuier with The Most Beautiful Girl in The World
- Then after The Ironman/Cotidianu appeared, everybody started to move like machines. No feeling. No brain. The characters entered into the system (capitalist/communist). Destroying everything human in them. This was the ending.
”I don’t remember if we dissapear. Or fall on the floor. We were anhilated.”



The Scandal:
-There was a presentation at the Opera in Bucharest before the piece toured to Paris.

-It was a scandal because it was not in the direction of the party (communist).
One was homosexual. Another was high ranking in society and was married with an actress. Stere was contemporary with his time.

-The Avant premier was a success. People knew that it would go to Paris.

-Nobody in Paris could expect that Romania could have produced a performance like this. Half of the audience was screaming and the other half was applauding and shouting.

-There was no presentation of The Hammer after the scandal in Paris. When they came back the performance was cancelled. The conductor fainted when he was fired. Everybody was afraid.

-The pressure of the atmosphere in the Opera affected the creative process of the piece.

-”I was in a state of a tranze”.

-Stere Popescu created the set. But Cezar doesn’t remember what it looked like.

-” You must feel like on a mountain looking down”. It was like I was on a mountain and howering over an abyss.

-Everybody before Iron man appear With intimacy f.ex. Cel Mai Fromoase Fata Din Lume with Omul Cuier. The Scarfaced man with the blessed something. The broken.
When Cotidianu came, everybody started to move like machines. No feeling. No brain. We enter in the sistem. Destroying everything human. This was the ending. I don’t remember if we dissapear. Or fall on the floor. We were anhilated.

-I don’t like the work. But I am thankful to Stere for giving me a hard time, because I developed very much after this. The fascinatian with Stere was like a drug.