[1][2][3] 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.

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.

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.

At the conservatory she attended singing classes, and also learned music theory from the director of the institution, Dumitru Georgescu Kiriac.

[4] It seems to have been at around the same time as she graduated from the Bucharest Conservatory that Capsali entered a competition which involved a dance performance on the stage of the National Theatre.

[8] She went to Paris and studied classical ballet, also finding opportunities to pursue an interest in rhythmic and acrobatic dancing, attending classes with Jeanne Ronsay.

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.

Capsali travelled all over Romania with one of Gusti's teams of "monographic school city-intellectuals", collecting folkloric materials over an "extended period".

Between 1931 and 1938 she worked for Constantin Tănase at the "Cărăbuș Theatre" (as the review theatre was known at the time), staging a tradition of stage shows reflecting the Romanian folklore revival: "Şapte gâşte potcovite au plecat să se mărite" (loosely, "Seven geese went off to get married"), "Florăresele", "Paparudele", Călușari.

[4][18][19] 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".