Cosmin Manolescu is an artist, community builder and curator, independent cultural expert and artistic director of Serial Paradise Company/ Gabriela Tudor Foundation based in Bucharest (Romania). He is currently interested in cross-border cultural exchange, experiments and artistic innovation, leading a series of international projects taking place across world, teaching and coaching young people and artists across borders and creating projects that challenge the audience in Romania and beyond.
Since 1997 Cosmin played an important role in the development of contemporary dance in Romania and in the creation of National Dance Centre Bucharest (2004).
In 2009 he was selected one of 12 European dance makers to participate in the Asia-Europe Dance Forum organised by ASEF and Alkantara festival in Lisbon. In 2012 he was awarded with a fellowship by The Saison Foundation in Tokyo to discover and connect with Japanese dance scene. One year later, in collaboration with Ștefania Ferchedău, he developed Eastern Connection, a long-term platform of exchanges and artistic collaboration involving artists, dance writers and producers from Romania and Japan (2013-2015).
Between 2012-2014 Cosmin Manolescu was the artistic director of ZonaD laboratory space, teaching regularly dance workshops, developing community projects and working with disabled people, running monthly jam-sessions and presenting dance films. He has a special interest in working with people with physical disabilities, children and young people.
In 2014 he developed his own method – the emotional body, a holistic approach of the body that includes touch, yoga exercises and sensorial/small motions that he is currently teaching across world and is using in his performances.
He made his debut as a choreographer part of the Marginalii Group. His works and projects were successfully presented in important festivals and venues such as Lyon Dance Biennale, Festival de la Nouvelle Danse d’Uzes, Dance Theater Workshop, PS 122 New Tork, Sushi Theatre San Diego, Enzimi Rome Festival, Dublin Dance Festival, Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles Paris, Morishita Studio Tokyo, Beirut Street Festival, Dansstationen Malmo, Brakke Grond Amsterdam, BananneFabrik/Choregraphic Dance Centre in Luxembourg, Time to Dance festival Riga, Seattle International Dance Festival etc.
His recent artistic projects include Dans-Wanderer, a tree-artistic project for urban and nature landscape. In January 2019 Cosmin Manolescu launched Emotional Europe, a new multi-layered exchange project about youth, power of civic engagement in Europe part of the Next Generation, Please! programme of BOZAR in Brussels.
For his contribution to the development of contemporary dance in Romania and support of the independent cultural scene he received the Award of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art (1998), the excellency award of the National Dance Centre Bucharest (2014) and the award for 20 years of cultural resistance offered in 2017 by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund (the only state funding body for cultural projects in Romania).
Currently, Cosmin Manolescu is co-founder of the AREAL collective aiming to open a new space for choreographic development, curating a dance season at the Museum of Recent Art/ MARe in Bucharest and organising the annual Gabriela Tudor residency program in Portugal and Bucharest.
Photo: Orsolya Balint
