Julia Lupașcu presents a work that confronts mortality with striking choreographic and theatrical intelligence.
As part of Resolution 26 at The Place, Romanian choreographer Julia Lupașcu presented a work that confronted mortality with striking theatrical intelligence. Drawing on her background across dance and drama, and shaped by her Romanian heritage, Lupașcu crafted a performance where ritual, symbolism and contemporary sensibility intersected. The title unmistakably nodded to Damien Hirst’s iconic meditation on death, yet the provocation here was not rooted in spectacle or shock. Instead, it explored the quieter psychological impossibility at its core: the living mind cannot fully grasp its own absence.
From the opening moment, the stage is saturated in haze, a softer, almost liturgical mist that establishes tone. It reads less as a theatrical device and more as an environment: a liminal threshold where the living seem suspended on the brink of departure. A single candle burns. A mirror remains veiled. The soundscape carries the faint toll of bells, restrained, distant, yet unmistakably funereal. The imagery draws with subtlety on Orthodox ritual, where Christianity and older superstition coexist. The covered mirror, traditionally concealed to prevent the spirit from becoming ensnared between worlds, operates as a powerful visual motif. Its reflection appears distorted, shaped by precise lighting and the black veil that bends and fragments the dancer’s image. The effect proposes that once the threshold is crossed, the world left behind can no longer contain a stable reflection of the self. Identity, as perceived by the living, becomes unstable and refracted.
Julia’s choreography was delivered with impressive technical clarity. The movement language demanded both control and surrender: grounded sequences dissolving into suspended moments that felt almost involuntary. There was a clever thread of subdued humour too , not slapstick, but the kind born of frustration. The sense of someone being pushed into performing a catabasis, an unwilling descent to the underworld. It felt human. Relatable. Slightly absurd in the way only existential inevitability can be.
Julia’s timing was impeccable. She allowed tension to sit just long enough before releasing it. And then, gradually, something shifted. The soundtrack and the bells receded. The ambient sorrow thinned. A single cello line emerged live on stage. It was clean and solitary. The urgency drained away. What remained was acceptance. The candle lost its necessity. In a quietly disarming gesture, Julia passed it to someone in the audience. A transfer of light. A release of burden. Death reframed not as spectacle, but as continuity.
The piece resonated not as gothic indulgence but as something strangely wholesome. It didn’t deny fear. It sat with it. And then it gently loosened its grip. This was a thoughtful, technically assured and emotionally intelligent offering.