SOFTPOWER unfolds like a slow, unstable film inside a darkened room. Time stretches. The image flickers. Nothing settles. Four bodies enter a pressure chamber. These are not neutral bodies. They are marked, social, remembering. They arrive with scars, habits, expectations – and begin to undo them in real time.

Rūta Ronja Pakalne’s performance is not about soft power. It is soft power lived in the body: unstable, risky, intimate. A trembling attempt to exist whole in a world that demands
division.

Rūta Ronja Pakalne is a Latvian-Estonian freelance dance and film artist based in Estonia. Her interdisciplinary practice spans choreography, performance, filmmaking, and teaching, investigating body, presence, and everyday experience. She holds a BA in Choreography from the Latvian Academy of Culture, further training at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, and an MA in Film Arts from TLU, BFM. Since 2019 she has been a lecturer at Baltic Film, Media and Arts School of Tallinn University. Currently also teaching at MUBA (Tallinn Ballet School) and ETA Tantsukool. She has been sharing her practice and teaching throughout schools in the Baltics.

Her recent projects include “The Space Between Us Is Not Empty” (2025), “Body of Dreams” (2023) –a co-creation with Laura Kvelstein exploring body archives, “Freedom to Lose Control Together with the Many” (2023)-a co-creation with Laura Gorodko exploring inclusive meditative rave performance setting, and dance film “H61” (2024). She also creates experimental dance films that explore movement and embodied storytelling.