Arkadi Zaides

Arkadi Zaides is an Israeli independent choreographer and visual artist, of Belarusian origin, currently living in France. His company Institut des Croisements has been based in Villeurbanne (FR) since 2015. In Israel he performed in several companies such as the Batsheva Dance Company and the Yasmeen Godder Dance Group before embarking on an independent career in 2004. Zaides holds a Masters degree from the DAS Choreography at the AHK Academy of Theater and Dance in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His artistic reflection focuses on the ways in which political and social contexts produce their effects on the movements and gestures of bodies. This reflection gives rise to a choreographic work that questions and provokes the audience and forces them out of their comfort zone. His performances and installations have been presented in numerous dance and theater festivals, museums and galleries across Europe, North and South America and Asia. He is a recipient of numerous awards among them the Emile Zola Prize for Performing Arts for demonstrating engagement in human rights issues in his work Archive (2013) and the Kurt Joss award for his work Solo Colores (2010).

Zaides continuously develops platforms to stir contemporary discourse of performance making. Together with dramaturge and researcher Sandra Noeth, he initiated Violence of Inscriptions at HAU - Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. The project brought together artists, thinkers, and human-rights activists to negotiate the role of the body in producing, maintaining, legitimizing, representing, and aestheticizing structural violence (2015-2018). Zadies curated Moves Without Borders, a close collaboration with Goethe Institute Israel. The project invited avant-garde choreographers to conduct performances and workshops in various locations in Israel (2012-2015). Together with choreographer Anat Danieli, Zaides curated the New Dance Project in Jerusalem. The project provided novice choreographers with professional guidance, production assistant, and financial support (2010-2011).

www.arkadizaides.com >

update: Sept. 2020