Soňa Kúdeľová has made her presence on the contemporary dance scene in Slovakia as choreographer, dancer, performer and teacher. She is the founder of oz CHAOSMOS (together with visual artist Boris Vitázek).
She studied dance at the conservatory in Banská Bystrica and later she studied at the Department of Aesthetics, Comenius University in Bratislava. The theoretical study she was aimed at finding parallels of dance and other types of art in the historical context. She completed her studies with the work "Analysis of Movement in Wim Wenders Pina movie" and "Postmodern Dance Art and Its Reflections in the Fine Arts".
She explores new approaches in performative art and their overlaps. By drawing from everyday performativity, she gains experience and knowledge of how to grasp herself, in the cluster of contemporary society, as well as substantial motivation and imaginative spontaneity in the creative process. She creates collective collaborations with visual, musical and intermediate artists and they test the boundaries of artistic expressions in one time and space. Through research of the body and mind, which changes over time, she oscillates along the themes of socio-psychological adaptation, interpersonal relationships and society.
She created three solo dance productions - trilogy - Autopilot (Batyskaf 2017), Autocorrect (Batyskaf 2019) and Autonomy (CHAOSMOS 2021). She also created and developed a collective participatory project “Sound of Silence” (Stipendium 2020) dedicated to working with non-dancers. She collaborates on the projects Manifesto of Possibilities (Petra Fornayová), Game (Tomas Danielis), Custom View (Danielis) Lines (Šicko, Pastirčák, Sliepková/ Biela Noc) Do Dna (mimoOs).
She is a board member of the PlaST - Contemporary Dance Platform and Coordinator of the Dance Residencies Center Telocvičňa at Nová Cvernovka. She is also a co-founder of the dance educational project Telohra (mimoOs).
S. Kúdeľová, B. Vitázek: AUTONOMY
Autonomy is the collective work of dancer Soňa Kúdelová and visual artist Boris Vitázek, in which they deal with the issue of personal autonomy, as opposed to the subconscious fears and external influences in the context of creative work.
Autonomy is the culmination of the AUTO-trilogy, following upon the solo performances Autopilot and Autocorrect, in which Soňa opened a confrontation with elementary conflicts in her life.
"Don't interrupt your thoughts with words. Come in and sit in silence.”
Imagine a (peculiar) movement, mind and body, as objects of observation and bending...
Can you hear it?
“This process vs. art work or product, is my resonating body and my dancing mind. Flushes of resonances in different parts of the apartment, as a long-term ritual performative experiment, help me capture the intersections between myself as a dancer and myself as a person.
Throughout the year, I obsessively research and analyze the rhizomatic firing of impulses that my mind produces. And the body survives.”
Autonomy is a process.
And it is an art work about creating art works.
It is one's own therapy, it is learning and accepting one's own autonomy.
Choreography, text and dance: S. Kúdeľová
Music and visuals: B. Vitázek
Dramaturgy: Kúdeľová, Vitázek
Dramaturgy of the text: Zuzana Husárová
Lighting design and tech. support: Dominik Novák, Peter Dolog
Costume: People on Earth
Production: oz CHAOSMOS
The project was supported from public funds by the Art Support Fund
The project partner is the Bratislava self-governing region.
