Profile | Eugenia Popescu-Judetz (1925- )

Gheorge Popescu-Judetz and his wife, Eugenia, were Romanian dancers who worked primarily as choreographers and teachers.

Mavi Boncuk |

Eugenia Popescu-Judetz (1925-) was born in Giurgiu, a town on the Danube river in the Muntenia region of Romania. Although she trained in classical ballet as a child, Eugenia always had an interest in folk dance, which increased after she married[*]. In her early career, she was a professional dancer and folk dance teacher with the National Theatre Ballet of Bucharest, performed with the Opera Theater, and taught dance in the High School of the Arts and in the Folk Ensemble of Bucharest. For a time she conducted research with the Romanian Folk Lore Institute, which gave her valuable training for future fieldwork. From 1954 to 1970 she was ballet master and choreographer of the Perinitza Folk Ensemble and toured internationally with them. Throughout these years, she taught workshops for folk dance instructors and amateur choreographers, created many choreographies for film and television, conducted field research, and lectured in Europe.

As part of a cultural exchange program, Eugenia traveled to the United States in the late 1960s to teach Romanian folk dance workshops. In 1973, she returned to the United States on an invitation from the Duquesne University Tamburitzans in Pittsburgh, PA. She became an adjunct professor at Duquesne and continued to teach and choreograph for the Tamburitzans. Eugenia received a master of arts degree in theology from Duquesne University and a doctorate in theatre criticism from the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of numerous articles and books and continues to pursue intellectual interests.

[*] Gheorghe Popescu-Judetz was born in 1911 in the village of Beleţi-Negreşti, Muscel district, in the Muntenia region of Romania. In 1949 Gheorghe Popescu-Judetz became director and choreographer of the Romanian government-sponsored Ciocîrlia Ensemble, and for the next twenty-two years (until his death in 1972) he worked on the compilation of a catalog and ethnographic description of all Romanian dances and variants. The research resulted in a collection of several thousand notated folk dance variants, more than 3,200 tape-recorded melodies, and approximately 4,000 notated dance melodies. The collection also includes musical arrangements, choreographic diagrams, photographs, and show programs documenting the activities of the Ciocîrlia and Perinitza Ensembles. Gheorghe’s wife Eugenia Popescu-Judetz donated the collection to the American Folklife Center in 1990 and 1995.

Other Publications by by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz [1]

Meanings in Turkish Musical Culture
by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz
Hardcover, Pan, ISBN 9757652539 (975-7652-53-9)ISBN 9789757652823 (975-7652-82-2, 9757652822)

Prince Dimitrie Cantemir: Theorist and Composer of Turkish Music
by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz , Dimitrie Cantemir
Hardcover, Pan, ISBN 9757652822 (975-7652-82-2)

Seydi's Book on Music: A 15th Century Turkish Discourseby Eugenia Popescu-Judetz , Seydi, E. Neubauer Hardcover, Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, ISBN 3829850077 (3-8298-5007-7)

Sources of 18th-Century Music: Panayiotes Chalathzoglou [i.E. Chalatzoglou] and Kyrillos Marmarinos' Comparative Treatises on Secular Music
by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz , Panagiotes Chalatzoglou, Kyrillos Marmarinos
Hardcover, Pan Yaynclk, ISBN 9758434055 (975-8434-05-5)

Studies in Oriental Arts
by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz , Duquesne University
Softcover, Duquesne University, Tamburitzans Institute of Folk Arts, ISBN 0936922052 (0-936922-05-2)

SOURCE