Check this out! If you are into seeing what is going on the world stage, you won’t want to miss Arkadi Zaides ground-breaking work, Land-Research opening April 24th at the Firehall. Through highly physical movement, projected images, overlays of texts and music and different styles of performance , five performers from different cultural backgrounds explore how their inner landscapes are affected by and affect the outer landscape surrounding them and how the current realities in Israel impact society.
Featuring Palestinian artist and actress Raida Adon; dancer Yuli Kovabasnyan, who immigrated alone as a young girl from Russian to Israel; Ofir Yudilevitch, a dancer with an extensive background in acrobatics and Capoeira; performer and video artist Sva Li-Levy and dancer/acrobatics practitioner, Asaf Aharonson, Land-Research gives voice to each of the artist’s personal relationship to land and landscape – internal, external, conceptual, symbolic, historical, textual and emotional.
What drew the Firehall to Arkadi Zaides work as a choreographer was the high quality of his work and his belief that art is meant to challenge and inspire viewers and to reach out and bring different communities and different sectors of society together. His commitment to working in diverse communities, including the Arab sector in Israel was illustrated in the highly successful Quiet, which played at the 2011 Dancing on the Edge Festival and is again shown in Land-Research.
“ Zaides excellent performers provide an original dance interpretation of the lyrical idea “ I have no other country” or the saying “ man is born in the mold of his country” Zvi Goren/ Habama
“Land-Research is a fine work with an experimental nature: it’s potent in its directness, with a monastic finery of taste. The distress projected by the body is simultaneously global and domestic. The performance demands intense observation, and is suitable for those who are looking for a different type of performance that is beyond the comfort of the pleasantly familiar.” Ruth Eshel/ Haaretz
Arkadi Zaides was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to Israel in 1990. He danced in the Batsheva Dance Company and the Yasmeen Godder Dance group and since 2004 has been working as a free-lance choreographer. In 2008 and 2009, he was awarded the Israeli Ministry of Culture Prize for young artist in the field of dance and in 2010 received the prestigious Kurt Jooss award for his choreography, Solo Colores.
Push the envelope and join us in welcoming this powerful work to Vancouver.