KAROLÍNA ŠNAJDROVÁ
- Lucie Blaze
- Feb 8
- 6 min read
dancer, instructor, multimedia creator, co-founder of 23 Poems Collective
This interview arose from curiosity: how movement carries personal and collective history, how different modalities merge into one language, how an artistic institution can wound instead of open up, and how injury can be sublimated into creation. I was interested in where Karolína Šnajdrová starts when she begins anew, what she perceives first, what she listens to, and what she must let go of.
I asked about moments of turning points, the pressure of performance, moments when movement ceases to be aesthetics and becomes language. I was not looking for answers, but for transitions: places where decisions happen through breath, attention, and silence.
Karolína does not speak about movement as a skill but as a relationship to the body, to presence, to change. I chose her because in her thinking personal history never separates from pedagogy or creation. Everything flows in one direction, albeit winding. I ask: what happens when the body stops being an object and becomes a compass? How does movement arise that is not performance but language?
Karolína does not carry from conservatory only technique but also constriction. The feeling that authenticity is something inappropriate. That passion, sexuality, “excessive” energy and expression are mistakes. She describes how shame for visibility gradually settled in her, for being expressive, for being “too much.” And this is one of her longest disciplines: allowing herself to be seen again. Connecting technique with instinct. Allowing the body not only to move “correctly” but truthfully. Not as rebellion against school, but rather as a return to something that existed in her long before school.
Body as a compass
Karolína’s work grows from a simple but radical conviction: the body knows. Not metaphorically, but practically. It is always present, responsive, remembers. Insightful Movement, her original format of dance-movement workshops, is not a technique but an open framework where somatic approaches, improvisation, rhythm, touch, relational presence, and mindfulness connect.
Her movement research draws from various sources, from Fighting Monkey practice and their complex movement philosophy, through breath work, yoga, and Feldenkrais, to principles of dance techniques.
It is not about the right step but the truthful impulse. Not about correction, but about listening. In every encounter, the body is scanned in motion like a landscape with bones (axis and structure), muscles (tension and intention), fascia (flow and connection), organs (subtle, often unconscious sensations), and skin as both boundary and gate. Mindfulness here does not happen outside the body but through it.
Her approach is not a single button. It is a process of tuning again and again.
Relationship
When she speaks about herself, she does not begin with dance but with relationships. She understands relationality as the ability to cultivate, stay in contact, care, maintain. At the same time, her attention gradually turns inward: the relationship to oneself is not a state but a process that changes over time. For her, relationship is cyclical, nonlinear movement, sometimes gentle, other times demanding.
This process does not end in a finished method. This is why Karolína will join the Teachers program of the Conscious Release© Method under Agostina d’Alessandro in Brussels in 2026, as the next step in a long-term research of the body as a living, remembering, and changing system.
Body as partner
For Karolína, the body is not a performance tool but a medium of perception. A partner with whom one collaborates, not against whom one fights. Tension is not a mistake but a message. Emotions are not sought but found through movement, not through pressure. Regulation of the nervous system here does not mean stillness as immobility, but the ability to stay in contact amid change.
Resilience for her does not grow from hardness but from adaptability, flexibility, and the willingness to change shape without losing oneself. The body learns to respond, not freeze, and here lies the deeply political nature of her work: it opposes the aesthetics of control and the ideal of the “correct” body.
During studies, night work, prolonged sleep deprivation, financial stress, and early responsibilities, a moment came when physical and psychological overload met at one point, and the body said enough. Resilience is not a slogan for her but a necessity she had to rapidly develop through life situations.
Her language is clear: the body is a partner you live with your whole life. It is not about “fixing” the body but learning to perceive it. Trauma here is not only an extreme event but also a subtle, long-term experience encoded in tissues, the nervous system, and stress reactions. The mind can be brilliant and cruel, creating a fog that separates us from the body, sometimes out of protection, sometimes out of habit. Awareness is key: once something is named, it loses some of its power. This is the ethics of her practice, a return from the “mechanism of the head” to a living bodily presence.
How she creates
Her latest work created in the collective she co-founded is called Rapture. In the creative process, she speaks about listening to the work itself. The material is born from long improvisation, presence, the moment. Only then comes the work: looking, discarding, thickening, but also admitting that the original concept was different. “We actually listen to the thing. We believe the work speaks to us.” This means letting go of the ego that wants to show all the skills one has. Accepting that sometimes the work wants something uncomfortable, physically demanding, or radically simple.
Rapture: between order and ecstasy
Rapture is a work by the 23 Poems Collective, a four-woman group that does not create aesthetics for admiration but a field for experience. The choreography was created by Kristýna Peldová, performed by Eliška Benešová, Tereza Krejčová, Kristýna Peldová, and Karolína Šnajdrová. The co-creator of the production is Slovenian audiovisual artist Enya Belak, who authored all projections and scenography. Musicians Kristijan Krajnčan and Rok Zalokar and dramaturg Aljoša Lovrić Krapež also contributed.
Rapture is not a performance to watch from a distance. You find yourself inside it. It does not tell a story but opens a state. It explores ecstasy not as escape but as tension: between structure and collapse, between the individual body and collective pulse, between control and surrender. Rhythm functions as a shared language needing no translation. Their method lies in this listening: long improvisations, capturing the moment that “fits,” reviewing recordings, discarding what doesn’t work. Passion and wildness never happen without attention here. Ecstasy is not chaos. It is a state requiring extreme presence.
A repeated, physically demanding movement code creates a hypnotic effect and simultaneously anchors bodies in the here and now. Once a thought appears, the rhythm breaks down. When the rhythm holds, space changes. Multimedia elements serve as additional nerve endings of the work. Image, sound, and body together shatter reality into a living kaleidoscope of fragments. The audience is not guided to a single reading, each takes away a different imprint. For some, it is a ritual, for others dystopia, a portrayal of female power, sexuality, collectivity, or the end of the world. For me, Rapture is primarily a work about boundaries. About where the “I” dissolves into “we” without disappearing. About how a short evening can create a state transcending the performance itself. Not as an escape from reality, but as its amplification. Rapture does not last forever, but the body remembers it.
How she makes decisions
Decision-making in her work is not about authority but sensitivity. In the collective, emotions, conflicts, tears, and anger arise; sharing is part of the structure. Decisions are not born by voting but by gradual clarification: what holds energy, what dissolves it, what the whole needs. The same applies to pedagogy. Every person needs a different entry point. Some relax through gentleness, others through physical challenge.
What surprised me
I was surprised by the precision with which Karolína combines gentleness and discipline. Spirituality without escape. Physical demand without violence. Aesthetic without self-censorship. Her work is not romantic; it is honest. Authenticity here is not a pose but the result of long work with attention. And I was surprised how often in her speech a simple but difficult place returns: being enough. Not as an affirmation but as a grounded state in the body. “Above all, you are enough for yourself and that’s the point.” At this point, her pedagogy, creation, and personal history meet.
Karolína Šnajdrová creates spaces where dance does not become escape but return. To the body as compass. To movement as dialogue. To presence that is not calm but alive.
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