Eliza Trefas spends her second Creative Crossroads residency in Berlin at Uferstudios. Again working on her project Grace, she invited Cosmina Moroșan, Anticorp Solar and Florin Flueraș “to be in graceful artistic company, to be in dialogue towards unfolding the meanings and layers of grace in art and in everyday life. We met in practices and discussions, yet each of us is developing a work in relation to Grace, through our own specific practices and variation of mediums. Cosmina and Vlad bring elements of poetry, speculative philosophy and sound, myself of dance, Florin of behaviors and embodiments of sensibility.”

In an Open Studio evening, they introduce the works Grace + Love and Where it’s near. “We’ll be glad to have a discussion at the end about this subject, the works, and what the evening will bring together.”

Grace seeks an encounter between its meaning in dance and a broader sense of grace as found, for example, in mysticism. In spiritual contexts, it refers to a mysterious state, received rather than produced; a blessing that comes upon. Eliza approaches “Grace” in its wide spectrum: from wilfully spiritual (forms of attention) to playfully formal (can we dance in graceful ways?), from grace as spirit that guides the dancer, to grace as beauty, charismatic trickery in the body. She is interested in bringing (back) a possibility for spirit into the body, for dance to happen out of a negotiation between effort and grace, dedication and abandon, passion and unknown. A dance at the edge with the unknown – a groove that's in the heart – if we can say so.

Love explores practices for embodying love – hypersensibility, ecstatic affects, subtle affective connections with things around – love in its expanded sense, as the affective base of reality, which, in a mysterious way, sensible bodies can sometimes sense and affect. In Love, the charged sensible bodies are inserted in "inappropriate" contexts where something else is already happening – from art spaces to supermarkets and anything in between (a dance presentation in this case). Their sensibility brings a contrast that can performatively interfere with the normality of those contexts, temporary zones of possibility might open. Since affects are contagious, the entire atmosphere and situation can be affected. Artworks are usually visual, movement, sound or conceptual based. Love is love based. 

Distribute → vigilant on the strands of obscure meetings. A practice of receiving by going along. To forget oneself right where fleeting signals of chance/elevation reach out.  A gulf in the sawmill, awkward antennas.

Read more here.

Eliza Trefas invites to her research workshop Grace at Agora, Cité Internationale de la Danse:

Within my residency at Agora, I will work with the somewhat complicated subject of grace. Grace seeks an encounter between its meaning in dance and a broader sense of grace as found, for example, in mysticism. In spiritual contexts, it refers to a mysterious state, received rather than produced; a blessing that comes upon you.

I'm interested in how working with grace could influence, inform, transform or support the way we are in our bodies, the way we move, perform and generally create. Throughout the days, I will guide minimal body practices, we will dance, try to find ways of moving with grace as well as notice it in others, simulate a Grace Contest, and discuss theoretical or empirical references on this matter.

Grace will be explored in its wide spectrum: from wilfully spiritual (forms of attention) to playfully formal (can we dance in graceful ways?), from grace as spirit that guides the dancer, to grace as beauty, charismatic trickery in the body.

The research has a soft spot for philosophy, intuition and a longing for expressivity, for a body with a possibility for spirit. It's open to anyone interested in working with forms like dance, performance, meditation, metaphor, dreams. While no professional dance experience or training is required, you're encouraged to bring a sustained presence and attention, as well as to be sensitive to, and careful with, your own process and that of others.

Ultimately we will see what it could mean for each of us to be and dance under grace. That, of course, if any of it will come upon us.

20–21 April 2026,
Agora, Cité Internationale de la Danse