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Anna Sedlačková
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Pedagogue, dancer, performer, and choreographer Anna Sedlačková (1962) started her artistic career in the Bralen modern dance company, where she worked not only as a performer but also choreographer. Whilst in the company, she met Marta Poláková, with whom she co-founded the a dato group. Between 1983 and 1987, Sedlačková studied at the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts. Later on, she taught dance pedagogy at the Academy’s Department of Dance Art. While there, she co-founded the Movement Studio Dvorana (1995–1997) with Milan Kozánek and Lucia Holinová. One of the main objectives of the studio was to develop the students’ creative and interpretational potential and to foster communication between dance and other artistic disciplines.

In 1998, Sedlačková completed a study stay at the European Dance Development Center in Arnhem, Netherlands. In the 2001–2002 academic year, she was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to study at Hampshire College in the United States. In 2005, she defended her dissertation entitled Fundamental Developmental Patterns of Movement in the Body – Mind Centering® System, and Ways of Using Them in Dance Education. In addition to her pedagogical activities, Sedlačková continuously applies her knowledge from the study of psychosomatic contexts to the creation of movement material in her choreographies. She completed such programmes as the Somatic Movement Educator in the USA and Infant Movement Educator as part of the BMC system in Germany (2006). In 2004, she founded the Babyfit civic association, which focuses on education in movement development, experiential anatomy, and physiology. In 2019, she attended the certified course Teacher Training BMC®. The objective of Anna Sedlačková’s work is to identify a system of movement that uses the connection between the body and the mind. In her work she points out the basic principles and structures of movement. She defines the relationship and interconnection of the different parts of the body. In this context, she opens the space for a reciprocal use of knowledge from other dance techniques, which she eventually uses in the process of exploration. Anna Sedlačková’s close observation of movement focuses not only on infants and toddlers within the Babyfit civic association, but it is also part of her creative choreographic work, which can be defined as a constant research in the field of movement anatomy, interpersonal communication, improvisation, spontaneity and playfulness.

As a dance performer, she has collaborated with Marta Poláková in the a dato ensemble, as well as with such international choreographers as Matthew Hawkins, Allyson Green, Martha Renzi, Mary Fulkerson, and Marjolin Sinke, among others. In 1995, she, Monika Čertezni, and Martina Bicáková established the AS Project, an artistic group that produced such works as AS Project (1995), Ballad (1996), Spinning Dance (1997), Pressburg Tangos, BM Express (1999), The Rules of the Game (2000), among others. One of Sedlačková’s works which originated during the first stage of her choreographic work is Pressburg Tangos, a partly documentary intimate testimony. It is constructed as a set of stories and memories of her parents and offers a melancholy image of the city where Sedlačková grew up.

Sedlačková’s approach to choreography has been strongly influenced by her study stays in the United States, where she also commenced her long-term cooperation with Marta Renzi and Marta Miller. In cooperation with them, Sedlačková created several projects which she presented in Slovakia and abroad and which featured also Slovak dancers (The Prodigal Daughter, Long Distance Dialogues, Dress, New Circus, and others). This creative collaboration has kept continuously developing on both ends. The renowned American choreographer and film director Marta Renzi has directly identified Anna Sedlačková’s creative impulses as the inspiration for many of her projects. Sedlačková has also regularly cooperated with the choreographer, dancer, and pedagogue Anna Caunerová Línová, who has lived and worked in the Czech Republic for a long time. Their common project Conversations combined improvised dance numbers and dialogue in a newly thematized structure. The textual outputs mixed personal statements with objectified opinions, and the humorous situations resulting from this clash of the general and the personal were complemented by the lightness of the dynamic dance passages.

Anna Sedlačková is an eminent artist who stood at the birth of contemporary dance in Slovakia. Since 1994, her unique ways of teaching as well as interpersonal and creative communication have inspired students at the Department of Dance Art, Music and Dance Faculty, Academy of Performing Arts during such seminars as Introduction to Movement, Technique of Merce Cunningham, or Contact Improvisation.