Towards Documentary Choreography - Encounter #2

by Arkadi Zaides, three-day symposium in Brussels, held at Beursschouwburg, Les Grands Carmes, and KVS BOL, 04/25

“Towards Documentary Choreography - Encounter #2” is the second in a series of symposiums linked to the doctoral research of choreographer Arkadi Zaides. This event brings together scholars, activists, artists, dance and performance practitioners to explore the multifaceted meanings of “documentary choreography” and to assess its potential engagement with sociopolitical issues as well as medium-specific concerns.

This edition places the act of attending to bodies at its core, emphasizing the body as a critical site of knowledge, memory, and agency. As such, the symposium invites participants to consider how physical gestures, movements, and embodied acts act as repositories of lived experience, capable of reflecting on and responding to sociopolitical realities. Attending to bodies means not only observing their actions but also recognizing the ways they embody histories of struggle, resilience, and transformation.

Towards Documentary Choreography - Encounter #1

by Arkadi Zaides, three-day symposium in Brussels, held at Beursschouwburg, 12/23

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.

Necropolis. Counter Forensic Practices for Mourning the ‘Othered’ Dead

by Arkadi Zaides, in Rekto Verso, issue 96: Post Mortem, 09/22

For over a quarter of a century, UNITED for Intercultural Action, a network of hundreds of anti-racist organizations from all around Europe, has been compiling a list registering deaths of refugees and migrants who have attempted to reach Europe. This database forms the basis for the performance ‘Necropolis’, in which choreographer and director Arkadi Zaides attempts to outline an ‘invisible city of the dead’, mapped from the graves of the migrants who could not reach their final destinations in Europe.