top of page

Towards documented choreography

2021-2025
project_Arkadi.png

TOWARDS DOCUMENTED CHOREOGRAPHY. INTERMDEDIAL APPROACHES IN WORKING WITH EXTRA-AESTHETIC MATERIALS

PhD project

Promotors: Annouk Van Moorsel (RCA), Thomas Crombé (RAFA) & Timmy De Laet (UA)

(Image: Institut des Croisements)

This project investigates the possibilities of choreography as an intermedial practice to relate to today's societal urgencies. For about a century, documentary theatre has reconstructed factual information to analyze a specific event or phenomenon. Visual artists and filmmakers have joined this trend and demonstrated through their work how factual information can be altered and questioned. Even though the field of contemporary dance is driven by critical experimentations, until recently practitioners seemed less prone to include extra-aesthetic materials in their work. However, when viewed as an intermedial practice, choreography is able to weave together factual information and embodied practices in order to question social and political realities as well as the idea of the documentary and the authentic subject.

 

Taking shape through different media and performance contexts, this PhD will develop artistic methodologies that confront reality through the imaginative reuse of facts. It will focus specifically on the intersection between choreographic and documentary practices and the possibilities of this hybrid cross-over to articulate new modes of socio-political engagement and intervention. The research questions what role dance can play in the critical reimagination of today’s reality. By combining extensive archival search with other investigative methods, the project will lead to a genuinely intermedial form of documentary choreography.

Arkadi Zaides

researcher

rkadi Zaides.png

Arkadi Zaides is an Israeli choreographer of Belarusian origin. In Israel, he performed in companies like Batsheva Dance Company and Yasmeen Godder Dance Group before starting an independent career in 2004. Zaides graduated from “Amsterdam Master of Choreography” (now DAS Choreography) at the AHK Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam (NL). His works have been presented worldwide. Since 2015, his company Institut des Croisements has been based in Villeurbanne (FR). He received numerous awards, such as the Émile Zola Prize for Performing Arts for demonstrating engagement in human rights issues (2013).

 

Zaides’ artistic reflection focuses on the impact of political and social contexts on the movements and gestures of bodies. He explores the notion of the border understood both literally (identifying choreographies emerging in border areas) and metaphorically (exposing discourses and apparatuses at work in relation to the figure of “the other”).

 

www.arkadizaides.com

 

(Image: Joeri Thiry, STUK Kunstencentrum)

bottom of page