Eugenia Popescu-Județ


Eugenia Popescu-Județ was a Romanian dancer, dance teacher, choreographer and folklorist. Trained in ballet, she performed as a solo dancer for several professional theatres in Bucharest and became a famed choreographer of folk-inspired character dance working for film, TV, and several professional ensembles in Romania. She taught folk dance in Romania and internationally. Later she became an expert in manuscripts relating to the 17th century Romanian prince and composer Dimitrie Cantemir.

Life and work

Eugenia Popescu-Județ, née Marisescu, was born in Giurgiu, Romania in 1925. Trained since childhood in classical ballet, she became a professional dancer and solo ballerina with the National Theatre Ballet of Bucharest and the National Opera, also in Bucharest. After her marriage to the dancer Gheorghe Popescu-Județ her interest in Romanian folk dance increased. Together they performed folk dance-inspired choreographies and they won the first prize for character dance in the International Dance Competition at Prague. From 1954-70 she was ballet master and choreographer for the Perinița ensemble in Bucharest. In this time, she also worked as a guest choreographer for several other Romanian ensembles. From 1968 – 1970 she directed and choreographed folk dance-inspired dance films for Romanian TV.
Eugenia Popescu-Județ taught dance in various capacities, for example from 1948-50 as a folk dance teacher and choreographer at the School and Ensemble of Pioneers in Bucharest, at the High School of the Arts in Bucharest, and later in the United States.
Eugenia also had a career as a researcher and scholar. From 1949-51, she worked as a researcher at the Folklore Institute in Bucharest. From 1949 into the 1960s, she frequently accompanied her husband on research trips in the field to study Romanian folk dance
At a time when international travels were a rare privilege for Romanians, Eugenia Popescu-Județ frequently travelled as a guest lecturer and dance instructor: to India, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, the United States, Belgium, and Finland.
After her husband died in 1972, Eugenia permanently moved to the United States in 1973. In the US she taught at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Subsequently, she became an adjunct professor at Duquesne and continued to teach and choreograph for their dance ensemble The Tamburitzans. In the US, she received several advanced university degrees, including a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, and published several books and articles, some of which are concerned with Dimitrie Cantemir and Turkish music.
Between 1990 and 1995, Eugenia donated Gheorghe's and her own collection to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Eugenia Popescu-Județ died on December 20, 2011 in Pittsburgh, PA.

Selected publications

Popescu Județ, Eugenia
Popescu-Județ, Gheorghe, Eugenia Popescu-Județ, and James Roncevic. 1979. Judetz folk dance notation. Pittsburgh, Pa. Duquesne University Tamburitzans.