Floria Capsali

Floria Capsali (28 February 1900 – 29 June 1982) was a Romanian ballerina, choreographer and dance teacher.

Life Provenance, disrupted childhood and early career Floria Capsali was born at Bitola, a midsized town and commercial centre in the hills south of Skopje, which at that time was in the ethnically and linguistically diverse Manastir Vilayet district of the Ottoman Empire and today is in North Macedonia. Capsali was an Aromanian. She was the elder by nine years of her parents' two daughters. Her father, Xenophon Capsali, came from a well-established mercantile family. Her uncle, who became her guardian after her father's early death in 1913, was the stage actor Ion Manolescu. Xenophon Capsali's sudden death occurred as the family was escaping to Romania in order to keep away from the ravages of the First Balkan War. During 1913 his widow and two daughters made their new home in Bucharest. Floria's mother, born Maria Manolescu, came originally from Breaza de Sus, in the Duchy of Bukovina, and had moved to Bitola as a young woman in order to take a position as head and teacher at the girls' secondary school in the town. For a time she sang as a member of the prestigious Romanian Patriarchate choir. Other stars of the ballet with whom she studied included Léo Staats and Gaetano Saracco. In parallel she attended the city's Sorbonne University where she studied Art History and Theatre Art with Charles Dullin whose Théâtre de l'Atelier classes were much in vogue at the time.

In 1926 Floria Capsali married the sculptor Mac Constantinescu (whose work was sometimes produced under the pseudonym "Mihail Filip"). Constantinescu was something of a visual-arts polymath who turned out to be a talented stage-set designer, evidenced some years later by his work on the set and costumes for the stage-show-spectacular "Nuntă în Carpați" ("Carpathian Wedding") by Paul Constantinescu.

By 1927 Capsali was well established as a member of the ballet elite in Bucharest. That year she was invited to participate in the so-called "echipele monografice" ("Monographies project") coordinated from the University of Bucharest under the leadership of the eminent sociologist Dimitrie Gusti, researching a wide range of folkloric and ethnographic topics in the Romanian village communities. Other notable participants from the interface between the artistic and academic establishments included the ethnomusicologists Constantin Brăiloiu and George Breazul, as well as Capsali's husband, visual artist Mac Constantinescu. Capsali travelled all over Romania with one of Gusti's teams of "monographic school city-intellectuals", collecting folkloric materials over an "extended period". The information gathered on folkdance traditions created an intensified appreciation of "authentic" Romanian folkdance. Some of the material was used for Romanian ballet productions during (and beyond) the 1930s.

Throughout the later 1920s and the 1930s Capsali was a regular presence in Romanian ballet productions, not just as a dancer, but increasingly as a producer. Around 1930 she opened her own private dance school at which many of Romania's finest dancers of the successor generation would be trained. Pupils included Gabriel Popescu, considered by some the greatest Romanian ballet dancer to date, of any generation. On 5 April 1930 the "Flora Capsali" dance spectacular opened at the "Teatrul Liric" in the presence of George Enescu. Presented under the auspices of the "Romanian Compioserts' Association", it was the first show of its kind in the country.

During her later years Capsali ran the "Liceul de Coregrafie din București" ("Bucharest Choreography Academy") at which generations of Romanian dancers have been - and continue to be - trained. In 1998 Arts and Education Minister Andrei Marga decreed that the name of the college should be changed to "Liceul de Coregrafie Floria Capsali".

Recognition By a decree dated 22 November 1967 the State Council of Romania conferred the title "Maestru Emerit al Artei din Republica Socialistă România" (loosely, "Emerita Master of Arts of the Socialist Republic of Romania") on Floria Capsali-Dumitrescu in recognition of her "excepionally meritorious artistic activities".