Game of Life: experience for timeless sorrow and love
Cosmin Manolescu & Eva Danciu
September 18, 2025
Game of Life: experience for timeless sorrow and love
Cosmin Manolescu & Eva Danciu
Studio Pro Arte
September 18, 2025 at 6:00:00 PM
Game of Life: timeless experience for sorrow and love
Dancing questions, crazy love – ghosts included, color & black and white, soul searching, yoga with Eva, air kisses, ecstasy of life, timeless sadness, sex flowers, mantras for souls, blue eyes.
Next stop: Game of Life – an experience of timeless sadness and love.
The performance by Romanian choreographer Cosmin Manolescu is a hybrid format combining a dance installation, a performative experience, and a workshop on the simplicity and intensity of life. It is created in collaboration with the workshop participants and the audience.
In a fragmented world where respect for life and individuality is increasingly lost, we must find ways to live with other people, emotions and the constant challenges of life.
What's next in our lives? How can we enjoy the present moment? Do you like to dance? Have you ever thought about how you want your life to end? How can we take better care of our bodies and souls?
“Game of Life: experience for timeless sorrow and love” is an opportunity to reflect on some of these questions, to have an authentic dance experience and to think together about life and death – moved by light and shadow.
The performance, created together with the participants of the *Game of Life* workshop and the audience, requires openness and curiosity from all involved.
"Game of Life is an intersection of dance, moments of mindfulness, closeness and distance—and perhaps even more. You decide: whether to participate or not, to move or not, to connect with others or not, to touch or not...
Over the course of an hour and a half, a palpable intensity of connection develops between the participants. Even as an observer, you can feel it.
Above all, one thought is conveyed: we are so alone – and at the same time so connected to one another.
If I had to sum up what I saw in a few anchor words, they would be: openness, honesty, curiosity, longing.
In the truest sense of the word, it is a performance about the other person, about belonging and exclusion in our lives, about the way we see ourselves and others, about invisible barriers in relationships – and about the deep need to overcome them.
The performance is also an invitation to the audience to create their own story—one in which loss and love, encounters and farewells flow endlessly into one another. Just as in life."
(Corina Șuteu, article for *Magazine 22*, July 8)
+16. Game of Life includes moments of interaction between performers and audience and can trigger emotional reactions.
About the Artist
Cosmin Manolescu is a choreographer, performative experience designer, community builder, and artistic director of the Serial Paradise Company / Gabriela Tudor Foundation, as well as co-director of AREAL – both structures based in Bucharest (RO).
He is currently particularly interested in cross-border cultural exchange, artistic experimentation, and innovation. He leads several international projects around the world, organizes residencies, teaches and coaches young artists across borders, and develops projects that challenge artists and audiences in Romania and beyond.
Since 1997, Cosmin Manolescu has played a significant role in the development of contemporary dance in Romania and was instrumental in the founding of the National Dance Center Bucharest (2004) and AREAL – Space for Choreographic Development (since 2020).
EVA DANCIU is a graduate of the Academy of Dance and Performance at the National Dance Center Bucharest and Move On's Daanasana Yoga School.
Over the years, she has performed in ballet, musicals, opera, contemporary dance, and performance shows, collaborating with various independent institutions and venues.
She currently works as a freelance artist in Bucharest, is pursuing a master's degree in choreography at the UNATC, teaches at the CNDB Children's Dance School, and leads yoga sessions at various events.
Credits
Concept & Artistic Direction: Cosmin Manolescu
Choreography & Performance: Eva Danciu, Cosmin Manolescu
With: Eva Danciu, Cosmin Manolescu, and the participants of the "Game of Life" workshop
Soundscape: Lala Misosniky
Video: Ioana Buraga, Alina Ușurelu
Object Design: Maria Mandea
Duration: approx. 120 minutes
Produced by: Gabriela Tudor Foundation as part of What's Next – European platform for research and creation, a cultural program co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund.
Premiere Date: June 7, 2025
The international premiere of Game of Life in Freiburg is part of European Choreographic AREAL, an exchange program initiated by AREAL in partnership with Studio Pro Arte – a cultural project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund in Romania.
