DancEUA Artist-in-Residence is organized as a part of DancEUA, a Creative Europe project (2025-2027) created by Studio Contemporary Dance Company – SSP (Croatia), Central Europe Dance Theatre – CEDT (Hungary), M Studio (Romania), Vitlycke – CPA (Sweden) and UA Contemporary Dance Platform (Ukraine) to empower Ukrainian contemporary dance through creativity, connection and resilience. The DancEUA residency program is designed to foster artistic dialogue, support the development of individual projects, and encourage collaboration between artists from Ukraine and the partner countries.

“Unfound” by Daria Cristea (RO)
“Unfound” is about the invisible patterns that precede conscious choice and shape the body’s ways of moving, responding, and relating to its surroundings. Where does intention end and conditioning begin? To what extent can the body detach itself from what it has already learned to repeat? Through the process of “desearching,” the work questions the notion of freedom: does freedom lie in finding a new direction, or in recognising the invisible traces that have been guiding us all along?

About the artist
She is a Romanian professional dancer and young choreographer. Her background is in classical ballet and contemporary dance. Currently, she is in her last year of BA at UNATC,Romania. Daria has collaborated with internationally recognised choreographers and artists through various workshops, intensives and professional projects, while also presenting her own choreographic works in Romania and abroad. Her current practice focuses on movement intention, exploring how physical choices generate meaning and perception. Daria draws inspiration from visual imagery, seeking to create choreographic worlds through movement and pursuing a need to expose a strong sense of visual fulfilment.

Mentor of the DancEUA residencies – Gry Kipperberg (NO)
Gry Kipperberg is a dance artist educated at KHiO in Oslo and the Merce Cunningham Studio in New York, and is a certified BMC® Practitioner. She has worked and performed both nationally and internationally with numerous choreographers and in a wide range of artistic collaborations since 1990. In 1999 she co-founded the company Wee with Francesco Scavetta, where she also created two solo performances — Strangely Enough (2010) and Under the Nothing Night (2020).

She has been employed by the Norwegian Actors’ and Dancers’ Alliance (Skuespiller- og Danseralliansen) since 2013, and has extensive experience as a teacher, mentor, and outside eye, as well as from organizational work within the dance field. Gry was awarded the Rolf Gammleng Award in 2012 and received a ten-year Government Grant for Established Artists in 2024.