Bodies on Edge and Bodies in Transit: Romanian Contemporary Dance in an Age of Uncertainty, a Fragile Present, and a Contested Future

On 24 February 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine intensified a broader sense of precarity across Eastern Europe, including Romania, and longstanding anxieties related to threat, instability, and loss—rooted in the Cold War past—resurfaced with renewed urgency. This article examines how, since 1989, Romanian contemporary dance has responded to these conditions, functioning as a site for expressing and processing the physical and emotional “edginess” of the body and psyche in the post-socialist present. Drawing on archival research, audiovisual materials, and interviews, the study argues that Romanian contemporary dance operates across multiple temporalities. Looking to the past, it preserves and reactivates the memory of bodies that shaped its history, resisting their erasure amid shifting national and transnational identities. Rooted in the present, dancers and institutions navigate a fragile social terrain marked by regional conflict, migration, economic instability, and ongoing debates surrounding diversity and gender. At the same time, they confront the resurgence of nationalist, xenophobic, and exclusionary discourses within Romanian society. Through performance, pedagogy, institutional initiatives, and collaborative projects, contemporary dance in Romania emerges as a critical space of reflection and intervention, actively engaging social tensions while contributing to the reimagining of political and cultural futures.