5 GESTURES TOWARDS… focuses on the intent to illuminate unseen labor, offering artists a platform to explore, fail, and rediscover. Two artists, Alissa Šnaider and Arolin Raudva, each with their unique methods of working, will meet for the first time and share the studio for ten days. Alissa, one of the initiators and dramaturg of the series, now steps into the conditions of the work, inhabiting the very form she helped create. This is a radical form of trust, where dramaturgy becomes a performative act of presence.
A gesture here is not simply a movement, but a performative, embodied expression of an idea that may take on many forms. It can be poetic, ephemeral, physical, or manifest as an object. What makes it unique is the unpredictability — it is an open invitation to create, encounter, and experience a one-time, collective moment. The gesture is no longer just movement; it is presence.
By the end of the journey, they will host an open studio event that might take any shape or format, and may occur in any medium. You’re invited to experience a one-time only situation, constellation, incident, or event.
A gesture is a kind invitation towards a conversation in whichever way it might occur.
Alissa Šnaider is a dramaturg, choreographer, and artist who inhabits the spaces between movement, memory, and silence. Her work is an ongoing experiment in unknowing, where gestures and images are not just representations but active processes that unfold with time. Alissa’s practice moves between disciplines, each project an invitation to witness something in the making – not the finished product, but the act of becoming.
Her work is shaped by a deep trust in uncertainty, a belief that meaning is not something to be fixed but to be lived with. She is interested in what happens when control is surrendered and bodies are allowed to write their own stories. Alissa’s interventions do not demand to be understood, but rather, they ask us to stay with them, to witness how they unfold in the space between action and thought. She creates with absence as much as with presence, inviting us into an ephemeral dialogue where nothing is ever fully resolved, and everything is allowed to resonate. Alissa is a graduate of the Sandberg Institute (MFA) and continues to create in dialogue with artists and collaborators from across disciplines, constantly moving, shifting, and responding to the environments she inhabits. Her work is a landscape of trust, chance, and the unknown.
Arolin Raudva is a dancer, choreographer, and performance artist. Her choices are primarily driven by an interest in people, shared spaces (of thought), and collective synergy. She is curious about how an artist’s philosophy and intellectual content are practically realized in everyday creative work. Arolin seeks the core, always eager to question further and dig deeper. Her practice is rooted in honesty, playfulness, and trust. She creates spaces where people can coexist – spaces that, in themselves, become active creative practices, something that can be observed and attempted to be captured.
Throughout most of her artistic journey, she has worked within collectives and values creativity where hierarchy is absent and the work takes shape through delicate and exploratory fine-tuning. She cherishes the unique potential and one-of-a-kind material that can emerge only from each specific constellation of people in that particular moment in time, something unrepeatable.
Arolin’s artistic path has led her from site-specific dance performances that connect body and material, to writing and performing text. Her great love is dance film and experimentation as a choreographer within the medium of film. Currently, she is engaged in "give dance a chance" – a return to her roots. Having been away from dance for a while, Arolin is now rediscovering and reinterpreting her body and movement practice by participating as a freelance dancer in various dance productions.
