I am a former principal dancer with a lifelong admiration for the performing arts, philosophy and the artists who bring them to life. After a stage career at the Romanian National Opera in Cluj-Napoca, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Vienna State Opera, and ten years as director of the Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy, I now teach dance theory, dance history and theatre theory at the Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music in Cluj-Napoca. My books explore what dance and theatre share and how ballet can be understood as a model for academic education.