Background
Eugenia Popescu-Județ, née Marisescu, was born in Giurgiu, Romania in 1925.
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Eugenia Popescu-Judet
Edit Profilechoreographer ethnomusicologist musicologist
Career
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, television, 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.
Trained since childhood in classical ballet, she became a professional dancer and solo ballerina with the National Theatre Ballet of Bucharest (1945-1950) and the National Opera, also in Bucharest (1950-1954).
From 1954-1970 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 television Eugenia also had a career as a researcher and scholar. From 1949-1951, she worked as a researcher at the Folklore Institute in Bucharest (then Institut de Folclor, today Institut de Etnografie si Folclor "Constantin Brăiloiu").
In the United States she taught at the University of Duquesne in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Subsequently she became an adjunct professor at Duquesne and continued to teach and choreograph for their dance ensemble The Tamburitzans (collection guide). In the United States, she received several advanced university degrees, including a Doctor of Philosophy from 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, District of Columbia. Eugenia Popescu-Județ died on December 20, 2011 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
