"For me, everything takes a great deal of effort, but in the end it is exactly as it should be," says Martina Apostolova
A choreographer, teacher and performer. She is part of the STEAM ROOM creative team along with Alexander Georgiev and Dario Damas, and their work has been shown in Bulgaria, Northern Macedonia, Sweden and Spain.
She got a degree in philosophy from Sofia University, then studied directing at the National Academy of Theater and Film Arts, and in 2015 enrolled in the one-year training program Dance Port Derida. In 2016, she made her choreographic debut with Mainstream, and this year won the Icarus prize for the dance show WO MAN, which also stars Martina Apostolova.
She thinks of her biography as a series of totally unrelated short books. She has choreographed projects in England, Bulgaria, Egypt, Vietnam. In 2020 she was selected for the program of the Vienna International Dance Festival ImPulsTanz.
She would dance her autobiography with a giant smile at a techno party, and the soundtrack of her soul is the sound of nature – the sea, the sky, the river... She works as a freelance artist. Over the years she has participated in dance performances such as Medea and Leda and the Swan, as well as in plays such as TRAEVREMENE. In 2017, her show Madame Kiflà opened at the Etude Gallery.
Three print editions with different focus that complement and develop our understanding of contemporary dance
If contemporary dance was a sea, then its local festival currents only began to move in the years after Bulgaria's accession to the European Union, when the first editions of the oldest specialized forums in this field began to appear.
Vladimir Gruev never thought that he would dance professionally, because most of the time dance was just a hobby to which he devoted a huge part of his energy.
Over the years, a number of spaces (some more sustainable than others) have provided a space for contemporary dance, although the ones entirely dedicated to this form can be counted on the fingers of one hand – which creates the impression that modern dance is everywhere and almost nowhere all at once.
Galina Borisova is a choreographer, teacher and producer of more than forty projects shown in Europe and the United States. She has been called many things, including "the Amazon" and "Robin Hood" of Bulgarian dance. Recently she has been in charge of programming at the Etude Gallery.