For this symposium, which follows from his practice-based PhD research, Arkadi Zaides invited various practitioners and scholars to reflect collectively on the notion of “documentary choreography”. By looking at concrete case studies and by proposing various theoretical lenses, the participants explored the strategies used by artists when combining embodied and documentary practices. Through different formats, they considered the potentiality of such blending not only to challenge the boundaries of contemporary dance and documentary theater, but also to engage critically with social and political issues.

Na nedavno završenom 16. Kondenzu – festivalu savremenog plesa i performansa, u Centru za kulturnu dekontaminaciju, koreograf i performer Arkadi Zaides iz Brisela izveo je predstavu Nekropolis, koja istražuje i dovodi u pitanje forenzičke procedure i odsustvo informacija vezanih za raspadajuća tela nepriznatih i neidentifikovanih žrtava – migranata i izbeglica koji su izgubili živote pokušavajući da uđu u Evropu. Predstava, kao doprinos aktivističkim borbama da se pomogne porodicama nastradalih migranata i mapiraju njihovi grobovi širom Evrope, nastala je u saradnji sa dramaturgom Igorom Dobričićem kao autorom teksta. U razgovoru koji je s njima dvojicom vođen za Novi magazin, dotaknute su brojne teške teme koje ovo delo stavlja u fokus, ali i kompleksnost same produkcije, odnosno istraživanja koje stoji iza nje.

Necropolis ist ein stiller Ort. Er ist still, aber nicht friedlich. Hier liegen die Toten, dieNamenlosen, die Ungewollten, die Verstoßenen. Sie ruhen nicht. Sie tanzen nicht. Sie warten. Im Rahmen des Theater- und Diskursfestivals „Claiming Common Spaces“, das in der fünften Ausgabe unter dem Titel „No One’s Land“ künstlerische, wissenschaftliche und aktivistische Perspektiven aus transnationalen Kontexten versammelt, konfrontiert Arkadi Zaides sein Publikum mit Daten zu Personen, die in der Nähe des Aufführungsortes Frankfurt am Main und darüber hinaus tot aufgefunden wurden. Bei allen dokumentierten Todesfällen handelt es sich um Personen, die auf ihrem Weg nach Europa oder an Europas Grenzen starben. Die Daten, die Arkadi Zaides in seiner Performance Necropolis verarbeitet, stammen aus einer öffentlich zugänglichen Liste von UNITED for Intercultural Action, einem europäischen Netzwerk aus antirassistischen Organisationen, das seit 1993 diese Tode dokumentiert. Zudem haben Zaides und sein Team Gräber auf über 600 Friedhöfen lokalisiert und diese Informationen in einerumfangreichen Datenbank gesammelt, die auch Handyvideos der Friedhöfe enthält. Dieser

body of data ist Necropolis, ein lebendiges Archiv, das mit der Hilfe vonengagierten Menschen stetig aktualisiert und erweitert wird.

Le public fait face à un écran. Entre les deux un bureau. Sur ce bureau des manettes de commande et des ordinateurs. Au lointain, dans le coin côté cour, un chariot de service en métal. Et sur ce chariot qui ressemble à ceux que l’on peut trouver dans les chambres froides des médecins légistes, un corps. Un corps en morceaux. 

Lorsque l’on cherche « Necropolis de Arkadi Zaides » sur internet, ce sont les images de ce corps, manipulé, autopsié, qui ressortent en premier. La performance est d’ailleurs accompagné du sigle (18+) sur le site du KAAI Theater, à Bruxelles. Un spectacle de danse, déconseillé aux mineurs, avec une image de cadavre en publicité.  De quoi attirer, peut être au travers d’une pulsion scopique perverse, le public pour Necropolis. 

Enkele jaren geleden toonde Arkadi Zaides, geboren in Rusland, opgegroeid in Israël en momenteel actief vanuit Frankrijk, het indrukwekkende ‘Archive’. Israëlische mensenrechtenorganisaties hadden aan Palestijnen, in bezet Palestina, camera’s uitgedeeld, om pesterijen en geweld te documenteren. Het ging met name over agressie (o.a. stenen gooien) van Joods-Israëlische bewoners uit de oprukkende kolonies die hun leefgebied bedreigden. Uit dit beeldmateriaal koos Zaides grote en kleine gebaren van agressieve en defensieve lichamen, actie en reactie, en hij bevroor de beelden. Vervolgens eigende hij zich die bewegingen toe, in zijn eigen lichaam, en zo ontstond een abstracte bewegingstaal die uitgroeide tot een choreografie.

45’764. Un nombre abstrait de plus, tel qu’on les voit pulluler dans les médias. Derrière celui-ci, des cadavres. Ceux des migrants morts en exil qu’a recensés depuis 1993 United for Intercultural Action, un réseau d’organisations antiracistes actives à travers l’Europe. Fauchés en tentant de rejoindre le continent, qui en pleine mer, qui sur la route ou sous une tente, ils sont pour la plupart anonymes, car non identifiables par les médecins légistes. De leur histoire, on ne sait rien: seulement qu’ils ont perdu la vie loin de chez eux.

Avec une équipe de 49 personnes, le danseur, chorégraphe et artiste visuel Arkadi Zaides, Israélien actuellement basé en France, a constitué une archive évolutive de ces corps ignorés. Localiser un à un les 600 cimetières où ils sont enterrés et rassembler les informations existantes en une vaste base de données: ce travail lui permet de créer «Necropolis», un documentaire à large composante numérique que le directeur de La Bâtie, Claude Ratzé, tenait à programmer «pour sa force» depuis 2021 déjà.

In his solo work Archive, Israeli choreographer Arkadi Zaides provides a physical and choreographic interpretation of footage collected by the Israeli humanitarian group B’Tselem as part of its “Camera Project” initiative. Arkadi Zaides conducts a self-analysis of the modern Israeli body by extracting, imitating, and repeating this material. As isolated choreographic material, the gestures reform in an ongoing act of abstraction: as a critical pointing at absence, they defy any metaphysics of presence, activating an archive of gestures, focusing on the aesthetic and political potential for the disappearance, pausing poses and positions — literal and figurative, ambiguous positions. Here, deconstruction techniques call into question the linearity of a history’s causes and effects. This paper will discuss the synthesis of the following questions to illuminate the methodology and political impact of Zaides’ Archive. How does the duality of Archive help it to serve as a tool for criticising Israeli society? How does the implementation of Zaides’ forms of expression and dance techniques change the role of the Israeli people in Israeli-Palestinian conflicts? To what extent does Archive engage with real politics, both locally and globally?

In this issue of “Between” we propose to bring into play the possibility of estrangement, or rather of estrangements – in the plural. Evoking estrangement means confronting otherness understood as that which destabilises us, sometimes radically, that which puts us in danger and prevents us from stopping in a space of reassuring mastery of the objects of our discourses.

What we wanted to do here, however, is to try to project the critical potential of estrangement over a long range, identifying its ramifications,

intersections and convergences with other proposals, similar but not necessarily coincidental, and with objects of study with which it is not commonly made to react.

This chapter focuses on Arkadi Zaides, one of Israel’s foremost choreographers, whose work has positioned him as an important opposing voice to the state’s dominant political regime, both in terms of its investment in the Occupation, and in terms of its suppression of aberrant artistic expressions. In this context the chapter attempts to narrativize Zaides’s biography as one caught in the throes of movement between countries, and in effect as one constantly reflecting a state of placement and displacement, which is transformed into choreography on stage. Accordingly, the chapter traces a certain development within Zaides’s choreographic language, which resonates shifts in Israel’s political landscape as well as in the artist’s personal one, and may be divided into two intertwined gestures: on the one hand, a transition from metaphoric-poetic meanings to painfully literal ones; and on the other hand, a transition from a-political to political, and indeed politically activist discourse.

Nato in Bielorussia, cresciuto in Israele, attualmente residente in Francia, Arkadi Zaides un artista performativo e coreografo indipendente che da anni, combinando ricerca teorica, pratiche e attivismo, esamina i modi in cui i contesti politici e sociali disciplinano e in generale influenzano il corpo. Tra coreografia e politica, Zaides sviluppa piattaforme performative complesse che, facendo interagire corpi, schermi, dispositivi e tecnologie, affrontano il discorso contemporaneo sull’esperienza dei confini, dei conflitti, dei regimi di visibilit  e delle politiche del movimento.

Sur scène, assis à sa table, installé de dos avec Emma Gioia, co-interprète, il manipule son écran d’ordinateur projeté en grand. Une carte de France et d’Europe vue du ciel, truffée de balises rouges. À chaque zoom sur un point, un nom apparaît. Avec un rapide CV qui fait froid dans le dos. Âge, origine, circonstances de la mort. Noyé « dans la mer du milieu » ou accidenté de la route pour avoir voulu échapper à la police des frontières. Plus de 44 500 personnes ont été dénombrées par l’association humanitaire United for Intercultural Action, sur laquelle le performeur a appuyé son travail.

Depuis 1993, la plateforme européenne UNITED for Intercultural Action recense les migrant(e)s mort(e)s en essayant d’atteindre l’Europe. Elle dénombre déjà plus de 40 500 personnes disparues, en grande majorité non identifiées. Arkadi Zaides est un écorché vif, il ne cesse de montrer via son travail la douleur du monde. Talos nous plaçait du côté de ceux qui sont encore vivants et qui tentent de fuir, symbolisés par des petits points bleus et jaunes. Ici, il y a toujours des points, mais sur des vraies cartes, et cette fois c’est trop tard.

«Abbiamo iniziato il lavoro su questo progetto – mi racconta Arkadi Zaides – quando abbiamo scoperto la lista di United, un network di organizzazioni che dal 1993 ha iniziato a raccogliere dati su persone che perdono la vita nel loro viaggio verso l’Europa. Nel 2013 questa lista contava 3000 morti, l’ultimo aggiornamento della ne conta 40.000 e sappiamo che si tratta di un numero parziale, ci sono casi non riportati». Partire dai dati, interfacciandosi con varie discipline per un’investigazione forense realizzata a partire da giornali, fonti orali, database ufficiali, archivi urbani, autorità cimiteriali e ospedali utilizzati come fonte per ricostruire la storia dei defunti, molti dei quali senza nome. Un progetto artistico che, per mezzo di una rigorosa pratica di ricerca, ha come obiettivo, anche, quello, di implementare la lista elaborata da United. «Fino a ora abbiamo condotto l’indagine in Belgio, Francia, Italia, Spagna, Svezia, Svizzera – racconta Zaides. «In ogni luogo è diverso: in alcuni paesi si tratta solo di pochi casi, in altri, come in Italia, ce ne sono moltissimi. In ogni paese viene condotta una ricerca specifica sul territorio e ogni nuovo ritrovamento permette di implementare il nostro database».

È stato trasmesso online Necropolis, del coreografo Arkadi Zaides, nell’edizione 2020 di Atlas of Transitions Biennale, dal chiaro titolo WE THE PEOPLE, curata da Piersandra Di Matteo per ERT in collaborazione con Mediterranea Saving Humans. Il lavoro si sofferma su diversi aspetti burocratici, medico-scientifici, sociologici, politici, in una parola umani, che riguardano la dolorosa questione delle morti dei migranti in rotta verso l’Europa. Un aspetto centrale della nostra contemporaneità, spesso passato sotto silenzio, riguarda le assenze che questi corpi vengono a creare, non solo quelle ovvie dei corpi non più vivi, ma quelle di soggettività innominabili – non conosciamo il nome del 95% di questi corpi, ci ricorda Zaides nel talk che ha seguito la messa in onda, coordinato da Piersandra Di Matteo. Così il coreografo bielorusso realizza una cartografia di queste morti senza nome cercando di ricostruirne i dati essenziali (nome, età, provenienza, motivo del decesso): una cartografia collettiva del lutto che diventa non solo strumento-archivio ma “rito e grido”, come giustamente sottolinea la curatrice della manifestazione.

Movement is the primary starting point of the research, movements of people who are systematically and brutally stopped by border policies. This is about thousands of bodies that are absent, silenced, drowned. It’s about a collective body, haunting us. Another aspect lies in the material itself, in a gesture performed by all of us involved in the project “NECROPOLIS”, and I’d like to call this a choreographic gesture. Wherever we are, we scroll through the list put out by UNITED for Intercultural Action – a network of hundreds of anti-racist organisations in Europe, and one of our central sources of data – and there or nearby, like now in Berlin, we try to find the burial places of migrants and undocumented asylum-seekers who couldn't reach Europe alive.

This article aims to explore how archival material belonging to a specific time and place, in this case The Occupied Territories in Palestine, is activated through performance and dance in the work Archive by Arkaidi Zaides. [1]

In 2007, the organization B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) began distributing video cameras to the Palestinian population, allowing them to document the daily violations of human rights in the Occupied Territories. The video material is now available on the organization's website under the name Camera Project [2], which constitutes a document of the conflict from a Palestinian perspective.

Archive : document, trace, enregistrement, acte, témoignage, empreinte, vestige, preuve, les synonymes sont multiples et la définition du terme est vaste, elle renvoie d'abord, dans son premier sens antique, au « lieu où l'on conserve des documents officiels » (arkheia) 1.

Voilà plusieurs années maintenant que le traitement d'archives sur

les scènes du spectacle vivant est apparu de façon significative. Si les hypothèses pour comprendre ce type de pratiques sont nombreuses et ici non exhaustives (symptôme du vertige du passage d'un siècle à un autre peut-être, influence de la toute- puissance du présent des sociétés contemporaines 2 engendrant un besoin d'offrir des preuves à l'histoire ou nécessité de débattre de la

« vérité historique » en fouillant par exemple dans : « les archives (...) dissimulées ou détruites, interdites, détournées,“refoulées” 3 » , comme on l'a vu notamment avec le travail de Walid Raad et l'Atlas Group autour des archives de guerre au Liban), on peut se demander ce que l'art fait aux documents et à l'Histoire dont il s'empare.

An almost empty stage, only two large screens in the background: a large white one on the right and a smaller black one on the left with a mixing desk in front of it. "Good evening. Thank you for coming. My name is Arkadi Zaides. I am a choreographer. I am Israeli. For the past fifteen years I have been living in Tel Aviv. The West Bank is 20 km away from Tel Aviv. The materials you are about to watch were filmed in the West Bank. All the people you will see in these clips are Israeli, like myself. The clips were selected from a video archive of an organization called B’Tselem." With this introduction the choreographer Arkadi Zaides starts his solo performance Archive (premiered 2014 in Avignon). For these short introductory words a young man (working at Tanzquartier Vienna where Achive was presented in 2016) stands close to Zaides and translates simultaneously every single sentence – in an act of collective responsibility as we could think instantly hearing this text. In the mere act of translating into German the young man must say of course also that his name is Arkadi Zaides. Thus, in the very beginning choreographic problems of authorship appear.

Dans le cadre du focus « re- » d’Entre-Temps, l'historienne et théoricienne de l'art contemporain Anne Bénichou a accordé un entretien à Rémy Besson portant sur le reenactment. À travers une série de définitions et d’études de cas, il est question de la façon dont le passé est re-joué en fonction d’enjeux actuels. Plus qu’une simple présentation, Anne Bénichou se livre à une démonstration qui révèle la valeur heuristique de ce terme souvent déconsidéré par les chercheurs en sciences humaines.

Ce type de traces filmiques peut aussi faire l’objet, non pas d’un commentaire verbal, mais d’une activation corporelle. C’est ce qu’accomplit le chorégraphe israélien Arkadi Zaides dans Archive (2014). À partir de vidéos émanant de l’association B’Tselem et documentant différentes situations d’affrontement et de violation des droits de l’homme en Cisjordanie, Zaides extrait un matériel gestuel qu’il recompose et reperforme de manière plus ou moins autonome. En un sens, c’est une conférence sans mots, sorte de commentaire kinesthésique du document visuel. En un autre, c’est presque déjà un reenactment. Plus exactement, ce serait l’application au champ chorégraphique de la pratique du verbatim compris en un sens large, c’est-à-dire comme citation et réactivation littérales d’actes de langage ayant eu lieu dans le monde. Ce qui, appliqué au geste, pourrait se nommer gestuatim

The performance Talos by Arkadi Zaides took its cue from TALOS, or Transportable Autonomous Patrol for Land bOrder Surveillance, a European sponsored research and development project for which an international consortium of organisations joined forces. TALOS aspired to develop and test a mobile robotic system for border control. Originally the aim of the artistic research was to re-enact this project, taking as a starting point the actual development of a ground-drone that could detect people and prevent them from crossing a predefined border. However, the research on the European project brought to light that TALOS’s goal was not confined to the construction of a robotic surveillance vehicle. The project also tried to shape our vision on the future of Europe’s protection by aligning this future with Europe’s mythical past. Confronted with this complexity, what was originally set up as a re-construction of a robotic vehicle soon transformed into a performance that explores the manifold temporalities that are folded into the discourse of Talos. Rather than referring to, or re-examining TALOS, the project here focused on Talos as an idea and on the future that this idea seems to hold. In this article we aim to elaborate on the complexities and questions that arose during the artistic process of creating Talos. In doing so we do not only want to come to a better understanding of the actual performance, but also outline an approach to the documentary that focuses on the creative potential of documents and shifts the perspective from re-enacting the past to pre-enacting the future. We situate this approach within a broader discourse on speculation and of a movement of activating alternative futures.

Een project als Talos suggereert dat de blindheid zich al in een vroeger stadium manifesteert, een blindheid die zelfs constitutief lijkt voor een dergelijk initiatief: al van bij het begin moeten migranten ideologisch zijn geframed en ontdaan van hun menselijkheid. Idem dito trouwens voor een ander grimmig onderdeel van wat we vandaag smart migratiemanagement zouden kunnen noemen (eindeloos veel complexer dan slogans als ‘Build that wall!’ doen vermoeden), een onderdeel dat wél werd en wordt gerealiseerd, in een schimmig juridisch gebied en grotendeels uit het zicht van het brede publiek: de akkoorden die de EU sluit met bedenkelijke regimes net buiten haar grenzen, om migranten tegen te houden nog voor ze de oversteek kunnen wagen.

De dansvoorstelling Archive van de Israëlische choreograaf Arkadi Zaides is een tweede voorbeeld van hoe empathie kan werken in het theater. De performance is opgebouwd rond een verzameling videobeelden, gemaakt door Palestijnen die leven in de bezette gebieden. Gedurende de voorstelling zien we op een scherm een opeenvolging van fragmenten die geweld ten opzichte van de Palestijnse bevolking tonen: kinderen die stenen gooien, dronken jongeren die op de deur van een woning beuken, velden die in brand worden gestoken enzovoort.Tegelijkertijd probeert Zaides om op scène de gestes en handelingen van de Israëliërs in de opnames te belichamen en te herhalen.

Per raccontare meglio della prospettiva dell’artista come testimone in mezzo al proliferare di atti documentali e medializzati prendiamo in esame il coreografo israeliano Arkadi Zaides e in particolare la sua performance Archive che ha debuttato nel 2014 al Festival di Avignone. L’archivio in questione, in questo caso, si riferisce ad una mole di documenti visivi, di vere e proprie testimonianza filmate dal 2007 da un gruppo di volontari palestinesi in seno al progetto Camera del B’Tselem, che ha previsto la distribuzione di videocamere agli abitanti palestinesi dei territori occupati della Cisgiordania, perché potessero documentare abusi di potere e atti di belligeranza da parte dei coloni israeliani . Zaides, israeliano di Tel Aviv e originario dell’Unione Sovietica, crea la 2 sua performance a partire da una selezione di questi filmati (una selezione esigua rispetto alle centinaia di ore di girato di cui l’archivio dispone), e decide di riproporli in scena attraverso delle video proiezioni senza nessun tipo di post produzione, lasciandoli nella loro cruda immediatezza e privi di elaborazione artistica. Quello che rende “personale” la proposizione dei frammenti è pertanto la scelta degli stessi, la loro durata e in alcuni casi la dilatazione e contrazione della velocità del filmato (Zaides ha in mano un telecomando) e in qualche caso il soffermarsi attraverso delle pause e degli stop su una scena o su un’altra. Dunque di tanto in tanto assistiamo ad una sorta di congelamento dei frame durante i quali il performer incorpora le stesse posture e le stesse gestualità che vediamo nel video, dapprima in chiave mimetica. 

Facing incessant destruction, looting, and denial, Palestinians have maintained a steadfast resistance against the project of erasure and forgetting employed by Israeli settler-colonialism. Rituals and classes, theatres and photographs, walks and ruins, melodies and stories are all mobilized for the spectres of memory to stay woke.

In States of Fantasy, Jacqueline Rose writes that it is precisely that memory evaded, that archive burned, that place destroyed, that evidence buried which returns to haunt. In Capture Practice and Archive, Arkadi Zaides’ work becomes the channel through which collectively evaded memories are not only captured and inscribed, but also displaced, abstracted and released in their most haunting form; undeniable, indestructible.

A few months ago I went to see Capture Practice, a video installation by Arkadi Zaides featured at the Festival Temps d'Images, Lisbon. Standing in the big old palace in Principe Real with some of my colleagues from school, we were all seemingly observing the same thing: on the left screen images of humans in a conflict zone, on the right -the performer translated those images simultaneously into body language, using his movements to draw a cartography of conflict, violence and pain.

I focus upon the choreographic language of the work, which I have been calling the strong reading of political dance. The work powerfully and persuasively questions the concept of a spectator and an agent, sepa- rated by boundaries between two bodies. The footage used throughout this choreographic work is documented by Palestinians who carry cam- eras. Their bodies enable the creation of the archival material. Zaides is the Israeli spectator who mimics the movement of settlers and soldiers viewed on screen, sometimes violent, sometimes complacent. His body reacts to the screen, his movement embodies the motion of the Israeli structures as viewed by the Palestinian archivists. At the same time, the spectator, sitting in the auditorium, is spatially located in the embodied position of the Palestinian documenting the abuses shown.

Arkadi Zaides portrays in his perfromance art piece, Archive, teh choreography of violance. As humans in a society we all participate in choreographies that are unknown to us. Mentally and bodily we inhabit the invisible flow of information around us, and through our movements we all take partin a game that recreates society as a whole. Coming to Israel as an immigrant from Belarus, Arkadi got to experience the choreography of Israelis. His main concern became the consequences of borders. In his performance he frames the body language of Israeli settlers in a beautiful dance of violence, hatred and power. We are shown video footage of Israelis confronting Palestinians. His interpretation of the scenes are expressed thorugh dance abd music derived from the sounds and movements in the film.

In a solo performance entitled Archive (2014), the Israeli choreographer Arkadi Zaides offers a physical and choreographic interpretation of videos collected by the Israeli non-governmental organization B’Tselem within the frame of an operation called “Camera Project”. The footage projected on stage shows only Israelis, but the viewpoint is Palestinian. Starting from this material, Arkadi Zaides performs, by extraction, imitation, and repetition, a (self-)analysis of the contemporary Israeli body, following a procedure reminiscent of Avi Mograbi’s for film. What is the specific nature of these images, whose very mode of capture emblematizes the conflict situation? In the face of them, what might be the contribution of an approach that puts the dancer’s kinesthetic knowledge to work? How far does this offering force us to think about the “documentary” potential of dance performance, which is too often brushed aside or played down?

Archive (2014), the festival's opening performance by the Israeli choreographer Arkadi Zaides, considers how dance can contend with the voluminous documentation of the conflicts occurring on the West Bank. Zaides' source material is an archive of hand-held camera footage of human rights violations recorded by Palestinians. The registry of clips is spearheaded by B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), which equipped Palestinians with cameras to document infractions by Israeli military and settlers. Zaides, on a bare stage save for two large video screens and a small table holding various pieces of technical equipment, provides this sparse context.

Jozef Wouters was toch heel erg duidelijk geweest. In zijn vraag aan een vijftiental theatermakers, choreografen en andere kunstenaars om na te denken over welk landschap zij in het theater verbeeld zouden willen zien, had hij gestipuleerd dat er in het eindproduct hoe dan ook geen tekst aan te pas zou mogen komen. Toen zijn enige eis massaal werd genegeerd en slechts drie makers erin slaagden om daadwerkelijk alleen met een beeld te komen, zag Wouters zich echter genoodzaakt om de regels aan te passen.

Deze schijnbare onderwaardering van de pure zeggingskracht van het beeld kon de scenografen met wie ik Infini 1-15 bezocht maar matig bekoren, en het moet gezegd: het is op zijn minst wonderlijk dat de ratio van beeld en taal in een project met de opzet van Infini zo ver naar de verbale kant is doorgeslagen. Aan de andere kant biedt de uiteindelijke voorstelling zo´n rijkgeschakeerde selectie van landschappen en vergezichten dat het onmogelijk is om lang stil te blijven staan bij eventuele gemiste kansen.

Israeli choreographer Arkadi Zaides’s solo dance performance Archive investigates the somatic impact of transgressions performed daily in the West Bank by Israeli fundamentalist settlers against Palestinians. The performance, which premiered at Festival d’Avignon in July 2014, activates the enduring habits of Israeli violence by weaving together two concurrent threads: video projections from an archive assembled by B’Tselem, 1 an organization that documents human rights violations in the occupied territories, and Zaides’s live performance in which he embodies the physical and vocal gestures in the video in order to re-present the Israeli aggressive position.2 While Archive has been performed in different venues around the world,3 it generates the

WEST JERUSALEM — In retrospect, we were complacent. We thought that the opposition would fade away by the time of the event, or at most, the action would amount to a polite protest vigil. Even after seeing the distorted stories claiming that our event supported terrorism and called for the destruction of Israel we were relatively calm. We are accustomed to this language — the lies and distortions of the nationalist right in Israel.

But when invitations for a demonstration against our event started appearing on the Facebook pages of extremist organizations the management of the Hansen House hired six security guards and notified the police. The night of the event, Monday, November 10, there were roughly 50 people inside to attend our event, while others were left outside after the guards locked the gates as a safety precaution. When police arrived, they recognized some of the protesters — and they suspected things may turn violent — so the police officers stayed at the scene and called for backup.

The Palais de Chaillot in Paris is where, on December 10 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Palais de Chaillot is now the Théâtre National de Chaillot, and in its basement theatre — Salle Maurice Béjart — Arkadi Zaides is performing Archive in which he borrows a Palestinian perspective to view transgressions of human rights by Israeli soldiers and settlers against the indigenous Palestinian population.

The significance of the place is not lost on Zaides but he doesn’t reveal it until the post-show discussion: the context of Archive is undoubtedly human rights but it is not the main focus of this work.

The Palais de Chaillot in Paris is where, on December 10 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Palais de Chaillot is now the Théâtre National de Chaillot, and in its basement theatre — Salle Maurice Béjart — Arkadi Zaides is performing Archive in which he borrows a Palestinian perspective to view transgressions of human rights by Israeli soldiers and settlers against the indigenous Palestinian population.

One obvious idea behind Walls and Bridges, a French-American festival now running in New York, has to do with making connections — or building bridges — between ideas and art. On Thursday at New York Live Arts, the topic was the link between music and the body. As the writer and documentary filmmaker Elena Mannes, one of the evening’s speakers, said, “Scientists believe that we came into the world prepared to respond to music.”

Even so, this program, featuring the choreographer and dancer Arkadi Zaides, was perplexing. The stilted lecture portion, lasting nearly an hour, showed Ms. Mannes and the French philosopher Peter Szendy speaking about the body while standing awkwardly on the large, lonely stage.

“There is a certain feeling of ‘in-between’ that you inherit as an immigrant. My life as an artist has expanded this feeling,” said Arkadi Zaides in an interview with The Arty Semite. “Living all over the world, performing and choreographing, it is hard to say what constitutes my home. My home is everywhere.”

Zaides has always felt like an outsider, both artistically and personally. Born in Belarus, the choreographer moved to Israel with his family at age 11. Even after living for decades as an Israeli citizen, he has difficulty defining the concept of home.

Zaides examines his feeling of oscillation on a somatic level in his new piece “Response to Dig Deep” which has its North American premiere at New York Live Arts October 10.

Accompanied by French string quartet Quartour Leonis, Zaides responds to Julia Wolfe’s composition “Dig Deep” in a solo piece interpreting the poignant sound of violins, viola and cello.

“I chose the music because it was so physical. The strings bring out such intense emotion — they literally vibrate, crunch, and move. I mirrored the oscillation with my body and thought thematically about being suspended between two points,” Zaides said.

“Reponse to Dig Deep” was originally commissioned by the Aire de Jeu project at Les Subsistances, a center for choreographic innovation in Lyon, France. Wolfe, the famed co-founder of the musical organization Bang on a Can, contributed her compositions and collaborated with four international choreographers. Zaides first presented the work in France in January 2013.

Zaides has made himself known over the past decade as a bold, innovative and socially aware choreographer. His most recent works Quiet and Land Research explore socio-political themes. Moves Without Borders is in many ways the natural progression of the overall statement made in Zaides' performances, one that reaches past the narrow scope of daily life and yearns for further communication. The culmination of months of work was meant to take place last week, with performances scheduled in Tel Aviv. 

First Gehmacher canceled, followed by Salamon. Apparently the sizzling political environment in Israel was enough to keep the visitors away. Their cancellation, while unfortunate, only points to the necessity of Zaides' project.

In Land Research, Arkadi Zaides presents a stark landscape: images projected on a large screen at the back of a wide stage empty of all props, except a mic stand at the front left. Land Research was performed in Israel on July 30, 2012 as part of the Summerdance Festival at Suzanne Dellal in Tel Aviv, continuing his process of developing an artistic dialogue with artists from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, into this landscape enter performers: dancer Yuli Kovbasnyan who immigrated alone to Israel from Russia in her teens, Ofir Yudilevitch, a dancer with an extensive background in acrobatics and Capoeira, Palestinian artist and actress Raida Adon, performer and video artist Sva Li-Levy, and dancer/acrobatics practitioner Asaf Aharonson.

For a few decades now, the body has turned into a place where dance is written. It's not a body telling a narrative with a libretto, not a body in the service of the whims of the soul, but a body of bones, flesh and blood that speaks in its own voice. It's a body that shakes itself loose of dance genres, of phrases of movement, of rhythms; it sheds everything familiar, in a desire to produce only what the body writes. The body in Zaides' work cries out in distress. His movement is not humane, in not attentive to natural abilities or the desire for what is pleasant and good for the body; rather, it is cruel and screaming. All the solos are finely performed and characterized by a restlessness – one that projects the sense of seeking, with repetitive motions strewn within as a refusal, as the body's unwillingness to express itself "properly". 

The sculptures of Isabel Cruellas, - stylistic, waved grasses in a raw, give the space the wideness of a coastal or a deserted landscape. The woman appears like abandoned, not fitting in, making herself small on the floor. Buckling, shrinking, lashing out, touching herself like a foreign person at her head, neck, leg or sliding down on the other arm. Her neck is firm. A leg. A pressure on the breastbone. Or invisible light bulbs screwing into the heaven. She repeats phrases like nightmares. Works through something by creeping, running or on her knees. Inside and outside simultaneously, or actually inseparable, and gets sometimes calm, as would she sink inside herself, as would she be falling invisibly. Strong piece.

The movement in the piece is extremely personal, deriving from the dancers, each with his own personality and in search of a way from the inner to the outer. There is no story, but rather an individual existential situation, albeit portrayed by a group, or in the background.

The creation takes place within a restricted white surface, shaped like a trapezoid, which is accentuated with the lighting – emphasizing that which is open, and no less the line distinguishing the inside from the outside. The five dancers do not move in the conventional manner of dance. Their dancing is built of small hand, leg and head gestures – even when the entire body is in perturbation or physical occurrence – much like a multi angled mirror of inner struggles, painful or exiting. This is a very strong piece, original, creating a strong tension between stage and audience, and does not allow you to remain indifferent.

On a black stage, with an asymmetric white linoleum square in the middle, lay five bent dancers. Movement has begun before the eye can distinguish. Body touches body, head pushes hand, and it seems the movement has a life of it’s own, stronger then the will to control it. Five bodies share one space and attempt, each in his own way, to extricate something that insists on staying in, as if trying to get rid of an obsession. Zaides’s lines are clean, which is also true of the stage design, costumes and movement itself.

It’s difficult to distinguish whether the dancers deform in pleasure or anguish, but that line, fine and deliberately unclear, leaves the audience attention. As his previous creations, this is also an abstract piece that makes use of sharp and mechanical movements, yet at the same time very emotional and sensual. At the end of the piece Zaides brings together all the edges of emotion that unfolded throughout and allows, for the first time in the evening, the calm to return.