Boris Vitazek – studied intermedia art at AFAD Bratislava – work spans many different media – visual arts, 3d mapping, interactive art, sound art, game art, video and photography work and extensive work with theater. Experimental music scene could be considered his natural environment – working with music festivals and preparing events, DJing and working on live A/V performances. His skills revolve around interaction design, dramaturgy and combination of many media into one comprehensive work. Works often include software like Blender, Unity, VCV rack, Davinci Resolve, and VVVV – software that has been most intertwined with his work and community efforts. He is currently a lecturer at Prague City University, but he has also led various workshops that were focused on creative coding. 

Pôsobí na scéne súčasného tanca na Slovensku ako tanečná choreografka a performerka. Soňa skúma nové prístupy v performatívnom umení a ich presahy. Sleduje tok umenia a jeho rizomatické umiestnenie v každodennom živote, nazerá na jeho históriu a otvorene pristupuje k jeho súčasnej podobe. Čerpaním z každodennej performativity získava skúsenosť a poznanie ako uchopiť seba, v zhluku dnešnej spoločnosti, aj podstatnú motiváciu a kreatívnu spontánnosť v procese tvorby. Skrz neustály výskum tela a mysle, meniacich sa v čase, sa pohybuje v témach sociálno-psychologickej adaptácie, medziľudských vzťahoch, či spoločnosti. Vytvára kolektívne spolupráce s vizuálnymi, hudobnými a intermediálnymi umelcami kde v spoločných procesoch testujú hranice umeleckých vyjadrení v jednom čase a priestore. Okrem každodenného života, ľudí a ľudského charakteru, ju inšpirujú naďalej aj odborné teoretické texty, štúdie a eseje o umení, performance a spoločnosti. Vytvorila tri sólové tanečné inscenácie – Autopilot, Autocorrect, Autonomy. Spolupracovala na projektoch s P. Fornayovou, T. Danielisom, kolektívom mimoOs, a i. Je spoluzakladateľkou vzdelávacieho projektu Telohra, členkou rady PlaST – Platforma pre súčasný tanec a Koordinátorkou Rezidenčného centra Telocvičňa v Novej Cvernovke.

www.sonakudelova.dance

www.telocvicna.dance

The civic association CHAOSMOS was established on the initiative of Soňa Kúdeľová and Boris Vitázek. It includes artists of dance, performative and audio-visual arts. It focuses on the creation and presentation of performative, movement and dance works, with an emphasis on visual aesthetics, supported by new media and technologies. The authors collaborate with several artists, create collective creative processes and thus develop diverse approaches to creation, through which they reflect the themes that resonate in them. CHAOSMOS also observes the performativity around ourselves. We perceive its diversity and uniqueness. We enjoy the vagueness of the term performance art. We want to explore it not only by observation but also directly. As part of our future activities, we want to foster several performative works, and create a dialogue or discussion with the artists.

Jana Terekova is choreographer and dancer active between Bratislava and Paris. She is the author of several dance pieces for stage and of site-specific performances. Jana’s work clearly focuses on movement and physicality and can be more or less abstract, depending on the project. The artistic desire relates to the exploration of the body’s possibilities to metamorphose, to become something else. She creates bodies which are situated „in between”: half human half machine, between thing and living being, or unidentified not quite human being, and bodies who blur the border between human and animal.

bees-R focuses on the creation of dance and multi-genre productions with international relevance. Since its foundation, the company has produced projects that generated precious and unique cooperation between emerging international artists, mainly in Slovakia and France. It has produced the works of Jana Terekova, such as Phenomena Research (dance-music-poetry-video, 2012), Cyborg Creation (dance-poetry, 2014), The Mirroring (dance-poetry-live music, 2017), She Had 70 Skirts (dance and marionettes, 2018-19), Fettered to The Moment (dance piece, 2020 and dance installation, 2021) Bariolé (dance piece, 2022) and Abnormal Repetitive Behaviour (dance piece, 2022)

Eva Urbanová is a Slovak dancer, choreographer and teacher. In her choreographies, she aims at studying and critiquing the mechanisms of the social system, empowering women and demonstrating the concept of dualism. She concentrates on developing her own distinctive dance style and movement language, taking inspiration from the contemporary Israeli dance scene and the field of physical theatre. One of her main success is her solo „The Essence“ which won 1st award at the Gdansk Dance Festival 2022 and 2nd Choreographic Award and Public Award at the Solo Tanz Theater Stuttgart International Competition 2021.

Radoslav Piovarči (creator, choreographer, performer) – Dancer, performer, tutor, choreographer, and stage director, Radoslav Piovarči has been part of professional scene of contemporary dance and physical theatre for nearly a decade. Throughout the time he collaborated with a number of leading names, theatres and ensemble, such as Lenka Vagnerová & Company, Artyci Dance Company, Theatre elledanse, Lucia Holinová, Staatstheatre Kassel, Štúdio tanca dance theatre, Total Brutal Company, VerTeDance, Jana Burkiewicz, Virus Theatre. His hitherto collaborative portfolio includes over thirty different dance projects, films and advertisements. As choreographer and director he made, since 2010 the productions of Munnie (Enfin seuls 2010), HOLD YOUR BREATH (Theatre elledanse 2012), SET UP (Theatre elledanse 2013), DUST (Liptov Dance Theatre 2015), and the modular dance project MIMO (Culture centre Dunaj 2017).

Paulína Šmatláková comes from Bratislava. Her studies began at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and continued at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. She graduated with a Bachelor degree in Contemporary Dance in 2016. During freelancing in London Paulína worked as a choreographer and a performer in an interdisciplinary group devised physical theatre project, Lingering Games, directed by Cao Cong and performed in Taipei. Between 2017 and 2020 she was a fulltime dancer with Blackbox Dance Company in Denmark. Here she worked with choreographers such as Ben Wright, Jason Mabana, Marie Brolin-Tani and Tina Tarpgaard, touring nationally and internationally (Sweden, Greenland, Tanzania, South Korea, Rwanda). In September 2020 she took part in making a dance film in Norway with Compassion2Dance Company, choreographed by Tendai Makurumbandi. Since October 2020 Paulína is a freelance dancer based in Bratislava, where she also teaches contemporary dance classes.

Martin Hodoň is a graduate of theatre studies at the Academy of Performing Arts, later he continued his studies at JAMU in Brno in directing-dramaturgy under the guidance of prof. Josef Kovalčuk. His work was mainly devoted to original and physical theatre with an overlap into contemporary dance. He completed his doctoral studies at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava and his research area was the relationship between performance art and performing arts. In Bratislava in 2015 he founded the independent performance platform GAFFA together with Dáša Čiripová and Zuzana Némethová, which has produced the projects EVA, Slowly Flowing Days, Negative_eGOtrip, Invisible guest, s p e e c h, By the Way, A P E N D I X, C R ASH, The Village.

The Late Harvest Association was founded in the autumn of 2014 by Monika Čertezni, Lucia Holinová, Daniel Raček and Anna Sedlačková, experienced dancers, choreographers and dance teachers who have been working in the field of contemporary dance for more than 25 years. The intention of the association is to create a space for sharing artistic views and statements of a mature generation of dance artists. The association is also interested in intergenerational and interdisciplinary dialogue and progressive pedagogical approaches. It adapts its productions to the outdoors and site-specific. It organizes annual educational workshops on progressive pedagogical approaches. Dancer and educator Katarína Vlniešková and light designer Jozef Miklós have enriched the membership.

GAFFA is a professional theatre group that combines an experimental and authorial approach. An interdisciplinary crossing of theatre, perfromativity and physical theatre. The principle of their work is working with corporeality, which for them becomes an apparatus of contradiction and synaesthesia at the same time. Since 2016, they have created six original productions.

Soňa Ferienčíková is a dancer, teacher, choreographer and founder of BOD.Y ngo. She had worked with many Slovak and international artists and companies and had performed in Europe, Mexico, Israel and China. Her solo EVERYWHEN was nominated for Slovak theater award DOSKY 2018.

Martina Hajdyla is a dancer, teacher, choreographer and founder of ME-SA. She graduated from Conservatory in Slovakia and Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She was granted Dancer of the Year Award 2015 for SuperNaturals.

Adrienn Hód is a choreographer and leader of internationally acclaimed contemporary dance company HODWORKS. In her creations she deconstructs the framework of body, movement, space and music and rebuilds them in surprising ways.

ME-SA was established in 2008. The company works as an open platform that combines author’s projects with inviting various guest choreographers both from Czechoslovak dance scene and abroad. In 2013, ME-SA became for the first time part of Aerowaves TOP 20 Priority Companies List thanks to project Much More Than Nothing created by duo Peter Šavel/Stano Dobák. The company got three times the nomination for “Dance Piece of the Year” Award. In 2015, one of ME-SA founders, Martina Hajdyla Lacová, was awarded “Dancer of the Year” Prize for her performance in SuperNaturals, another piece by ME-SA listed at Aerowaves Selection for 2015. For the performance in the solo project L – One of the Seven was Martina Hajdyla Lacová nominated for prestigious czech Thálie Award 2016. ME-SA has presented its projects at various festivals: APAP/NYC, Spring Forward, Czech Dance Platform, Tanec Praha, Edinburg Fringe etc.

Bod.Y – the brain child of Slovak dance artist Soňa Ferienčíková is a non-profit organisation focused on the creation and production of new dance works from young Slovak and international artists. BOD.Y´s interest is on contemporary dance for stage that fuse performative disciplines, as well as dance films, video art, and site specific performance. It also initiate the creation of new works and is open to proposals from artists from all fields. BOD.Y´s works are presented in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Belgium, Hungary, Germany, Spain and Latvia.

Manuel Ronda studied industrial design at the University of Architecture in Genoa and the School of Modern Dance Theater in Amsterdam. He works worldwide as a dancer, actor and performer – he collaborates with various artists and groups (UltimaVez/Wim Vandekeybus, Rootlesroots/Kapatenea-Fruček, Andre Gingras, Frederic Flamand, Tasya Krougovykh/Pussy Riot…), dramaturgically assists choreographer Elena Fokina and works as an actor at the children’s theater “Teatro del Piccione”. His solo “El Gran Salto” was premiered in Tijuana, Mexico in 2019 and he is currently touring and leads workshops worldwide.

The Civic Association Tanečno is an association of young people active in the field of art, culture and community organizing. The year-round activities are mainly based on the organization of the Orava Dance and Movement Festival – Tanečno, which has had six successful years. Among the aims of the civil association are the development, creation and preservation of cultural values and the support of education in the field of culture and art. The association also fulfills these goals by creating year-round artistic and educational activities, especially in the Orava region. The association also operates as a creative and performative collective (Passing/station, The urge grows, YOLT, Antrophos Anthem, Gentle man, Na hlasku, Be off…).

László Fülöp born on the 16th of December, 1987 in Budapest, Hungary the most tender bartender, an introvert shop assistant, also a dancer, performer & choreographer founder of Timothy and the Things I graduated at Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy in 2010. Since then, as a freelancer I’ve worked and collaborated with many artists and dance companies from Hungary and abroad – Vladislava Malá, Adrienn Hód, Eléonore Valére Lachky, Éva Karczag, Klári Pataky Dance Company, Zoltán Nagy, Eva Duda Dance Company, Finita la Commedia, and from 2012 on, I’ve been mainly dancing for the Danish Granhoj Dans Company. In the meantime I’ve developed my own choreographic works under the name of Timothy and the Things. In 2016 I’ve got Viktor Fülöp Scholarship as an emerging young choreographer and in 2018 received a grant from the Gaubier’s Fund as a dancer, performer. The core topic of my interest revolves around exploring and analysing, from every conceivable angle, issues relating to all forms of human social behaviour and communication, completely without generalizations or prejudices, in a simple, pure and personal way. I find extremely important to let people see and understand those inner processes which influence and guide their acts and decisions on an subconscious level.

Divadlo Štúdio tanca is the only theater dedicated to contemporary dance in Slovakia with its own artistic cast. It has been operating in Banská Bystrica since 1998. In its focus, it paves the way for original work that respects artists in their creative expression and opinion and continuously supports the creation of original dance productions and their regular presentation.

Choreographer and media artist Tomas Danielis (Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, 1980) is known for creating artworks founded on the totality of perception aiming at integral arts. Member of the outstanding generation of Slovak dancers[2] and choreographers born in the 80ties, he is often nicked as a black sheep of the Slovak contemporary dance scene due to his uncompromising approach to arts and reflection of transformative processes in post-communistic Slovakia. He is considered one of the foremost Slovak dance artists. His choreography engages in a type of dramaturgy overruling the primacy of music and libretto in dance, engaging in exploring sociological works on stage. After working on questions of mechanics of power he founded in 2021 collective Radical Empathy, in which along with his colleagues explores topics of empathy, fundamentals of human perceptions and interactions and their impact on creating sociological structures. His work had been “characterised by high intensity of movement expressiveness, defined intellectual concept and uncompromising dramaturgical stylisation. Choreography made of extraordinary images expressed in a rich physical language complemented by spare poignant and often ironically funny texts in total as comprehensible as music, sculpture, painting or architecture. ”His works had been presented in over 20 countries on 3 continents. His most notable works are 21&counting, Mainly Love, Equilibrium and most recent production Custom view. In 2016 and 2017 Danielis were the head teacher and resident choreographer of Ballet Moskva, where he also created performance Equilibrium based on game theory research as a part of a series about mechanics of power with a particular accent on abuse of power. From 2007 to 2009 he was art director of Int. Bühnenwerkstatt Tanztheater Festival Graz. Tomas Danielis is laureate of a number of prizes for performing art and choreography, such as the 2007 Contest – TanzRat Wien, a special prize for choreography and performing art at the 2007 Theatre Arts Festival in Rybnik, Poland, and the prize for choreography at the same event in 2009. His performing activities also saw him in the Reumert Award-winning productions “Men and Mahler” (2013) and “Rite of Spring – Extended” (2014) as a member of Danish ensemble Granhøj Dans. As a performer, he collaborated with cie.W.Dorner, director Olivier Py, Sasha Waltz and guests (as a guest), cie. F.Ruckert, Freyer Ensemble, Granhoj Dans. Danielis also ventured for 4 years in ballet. He was a soloist of Croatian national Ballet in Rijeka, guest soloist of Ballet Graz and member of the ballet ensemble of Slovak National Theatre. His pedagogical work brought him to Charleroi Dans, Henny Jurriens Amsterdam, NRW Düsseldorf, CODARTS,TQW Wien, Hot Summer Kyoto, Dansehallerne Copenhagen, Bora Bora Arhus, Ballet Moscow, Danceworx New Delhi, Tsekh, Ukrainian Contemporary Dance platform, Int. Bühnenwerkstatt Tanztheater Festival, Anton Bruckner university Linz, Terrence Lewis academy and others.

Radical Empathy is an art group created in Autumn 2021 by Tomáš Danielis as a reaction to contemporary events. Its main goal is to support creating and distributing contemporary art pieces as sociological probes. Radical Empathy focuses primarily on creating performative art (dance and stand-up), original texts (mainly for performing arts), photography and media work. It does that without geographical restriction, but with (critical to) the European region and events in mind. The first art pieces created by the group had been Mainly Love inter-media performance (21st October 2021,Nuit Blanche Festival), Custom View – a dance performance performed in Moyzes Hall Bratislava (3rd May 2022), followed by the photographic exhibition Entelechiea in Artezka Detva (11th May 2022). People, whom participated on this 2 events are Tomáš Danielis, Marek Godovič, Soňa Kúdeľová, Zuzana Husárová, Lenka Sršnová Ľubomír Panák, Anthony Rouchier, Samuel Velebný (as curator of exhibition). In their work together they used, re-used and recycled besides documentary materials also works of David Bowie, Pat Matheny, Vladimír Godár, Gioachino Rossini and others.