Profile

Ariadna Vendelova (1990) lives in a mountain village near Košice, Slovakia. She is an aerial dancer, choreographer, performer, poetess and yoga teacher, working locally and internationally as a solo artist, as well as with her aerial dance company LALYRA, while also involving herself in a variety of community- based activities through her creative platform ARIADNINA NIŤ.

Ariadna is a co-director of unique international event Cat ́s Paw Experimental Aerial Dance Meeting together with Emily Aoibhean (Ireland), and has many ongoing projects, including a new site-specific, urban landscape-based performance Borderlines (2025), performing in National Slovak Theater in Košice, Slovakia, and creating original work with international artists in Angers, France in March 2026 under direction of Charlotte de la Bretéque and Fred Deb´, while also traveling to teach around Europe.

She toured her solo production All My Skirts (2019), created with a supervision of Fred Deb ́, which has had showings at festivals such as Letní Letná 2022 (CZ), La Nuit du Cirque 2021 (FR), Move Fest Košice 2020 (SK), Fun Fatale 2021 (CR), Les Rencontres de Danse Aerienne 2021 (FR), Art-In-Res Fest 2021 (SK) and others. Her other works include an experimental harness dance on a tree in natural enviroment called ANAM (2022–2025), movement installation/ex­perimental site-specific performance Inner Spaces (2021), a community based children´s new circus show O Jankovi Polienkovi (2021) created locally with Lalyra Company.
Together with cinematographer Michaela Hošková (SK) and composer Peter Power (IR), she has released a scholarship-supported short dance film thematizing trauma from isolation called A few decades of dying (2021).

She performed in Sorry Gold by Emily Aoibheann during Dubline Fringe Festival 2019 (IR), In a collaborative new circus production FOREST by Druzstvo Matafir and Danjela Zajc (SL), productions with Divadlo Na Peróne (SK), and many others, including her own creations Birds and In The Wind, both presented at contemporary arts festival White Night 2018, 2019, 2021 in Slovakia. She is also working on ́Moje More ́- publication platform for poetry of women, as well as a publication of her authorial poetry. She starred in several short films and videos, such as MUSCINEA (2022) by director Chloe Belloc (FR).

Ariadna has been teaching aerial silks and hoop around festivals and studios in Europe for the last couple of years, including: ASC_Aerial Sicilian Convention (Palermo, Sicily), BAM-Budapest Aerial Meeting (Budapest, Hungary), Prague Aerial Convention (Prague, Czech republic), Les Rencontres De Danse Aerienne (Saint-Nazaire, France), Aerial Arts Festival Austria (Vienna, Austria), Grazer Akrobatik Festival (Graz, Austria), World Circus Day (Bratislava, Slovakia), Žonglobalizace (Plzeň, Czech republic), Aerosomnia Retreats (AU) and others.

In the year of 2026 she is planning to teach in

• OGC 2026 in Lyon (France) _ Over Ground Cirkus
• DADA 2026 in Dordogne (France) _ Dordogne Aerial Dance Atelier
• Katapult studio in Berlin, Germany (dates to be announced)

Ariadna ́s specialities are aerial silks and aerial hoop. Her approach to movement is very somatic and greatly influenced by yoga, dance improvisation and nature, with an aerial dance technique deeply focused on breath work, movement quality and on principles of organic movement: fluidity, breathing principles, movement awareness, working of spine and joints, use of spirals, expansions and contractions in movement, and moving consciously with intention and understanding. Her approach to aerial dance, movement arts and self-development aims to be holistic and experiential, raw and intimate, natural and personal.

Currently, she is developing a personal methodology concept #simplifyaerial, re-envisioning aerial dance as experiential and movement-based rather than showcasing and trick-based. She propones the idea that aerial dance presents a separate aesthetic field than circus, and tries to bring dance nto aerial acrobatics. Interested in ceremonial dance, rituals, and sacred movement practices, she identifies as an aerial dance priestess. Currently in her aerial movement practise, Ariadna is interested in body- movement installations, the concepts of time and space, slowness, perception and perspectives, physics of the aerial movement.

Uniting all of these interests under the label ́Ariadnina Niť ́ (Eng.: ́Ariadna ́s Thread / Greek mythological term), Ariadna is searching for their interlinks and common denominators, finding art in everyday life and pointing to the creative potential in people through discovering the body as one ́s primary and inherent artistic platform with limitless options for self-expression through movement. Her focus is on the process rather than the result, her approach to movement arts and self-development aims to be holistic and experiential, raw and intimate, natural and personal.