GERGANA PANOVA

PRESENTATION ON BULGARIAN FOLK DANCE

Gergana Panova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and graduated from the National High School for Dance in Sofia, the Academy for Music and Dance Pedagogy in Plovdiv, the Folkwang University of Arts in Essen and the Technical University of Dortmund. She received her D.Sc. in cultural philosophy and communicative sciences with special awards in Germany and a Habilitation in ethnomusicology from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS). 

From 1988 to 1994 she choreographed and was a solo dancer with the National Ensemble of Bulgaria “Philip Koutev”, while also working with children and youth doing stage performances and establishing dance therapy for children in Sofia. She also co-founded the Theater Department of the New Bulgarian University and still works with the Theatre Total in Bochum, Germany. 

Gergana devoted herself to the research of folk dance traditions, and for 23 years, she directed the Dance Archive and the Ethnochoreology Department at the Institute for Art Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) in Sofia. Currently she is professor for International Dances at the Folkwang University of Arts in Essen, Germany and still a member of the BAS.

Gergana has published over 70 articles and two books on various aspects of Bulgarian traditional dance, ethnology and non-verbal communication and has lectured at numerous universities in Europe, Asia, South and North America. She has initiated theatre and dance therapy projects in different European countries, leads dance courses for refugees and locals in Germany and has taught over 300 Bulgarian and international folk dance workshops in many countries around the world.

Gergana is trained as a folk dance pedagogue, stage performer and director, contemporary dance choreographer, ethnologist, Laban notator, cultural anthropologist and philosopher. 

She visited Stockton Folk Dance Camp briefly in 2016 during her Fulbright project on the UCLA and was a faculty member in 2019 and in 2021 (the winter edition). 

This time Gergana will tell us about her life story and through the prism of a single person we will learn more about the development of Bulgarian folk dances in recent years.