Since 1993, UNITED for Intercultural Action, a network of hundreds of anti-racist organizations from all over Europe, has been compiling a list of refugees and migrants who lost their lives on their way to the continent. Arkadi Zaides and his team use the list as a starting point to delve into the practice of forensics and conceive a new virtual depository documenting the remains of the many whose deaths remain to this day mostly unacknowledged. Each performance confronts the audience with data collected in the vicinity of the performing space and uses choreographic tools to lead us to question our collective ethical responsibility. The growing archive, the map, the invisible landscape thus created is stretching in all directions across space and time, interrelating the mythologies, histories, geographies and anatomies of those who have been granted entrance to NECROPOLIS. Freedom of movement needs to be returned to the bodies who are admitted to Europe as corpses. And although in the City of the Dead there is no-body left to dance, it is exactly that no-body, that body of the bodies - the body of NECROPOLIS - which Zaides aims to animate back to life.
Since 1993, UNITED for Intercultural Action, a network of hundreds of anti-racist organizations from all over Europe, has been compiling a list of refugees and migrants who lost their lives on their way to the continent. Arkadi Zaides and his team use the list as a starting point to delve into the practice of forensics and conceive a new virtual depository documenting the remains of the many whose deaths remain to this day mostly unacknowledged. Each performance confronts the audience with data collected in the vicinity of the performing space and uses choreographic tools to lead us to question our collective ethical responsibility. The growing archive, the map, the invisible landscape thus created is stretching in all directions across space and time, interrelating the mythologies, histories, geographies and anatomies of those who have been granted entrance to NECROPOLIS. Freedom of movement needs to be returned to the bodies who are admitted to Europe as corpses. And although in the City of the Dead there is no-body left to dance, it is exactly that no-body, that body of the bodies - the body of NECROPOLIS - which Zaides aims to animate back to life.
Concept & direction | Arkadi Zaides |
Dramaturgy, text and voice | Igor Dobricic |
Research assistant | Emma Gioia |
Performers | Arkadi Zaides, Emma Gioia |
Sculpture | Moran Senderovich |
3D modeling | Mark Florquin |
Avatar animation | Jean Hubert |
Animation assistant | Thibaut Rostagnat |
Light | Jan Mergaert |
Sound design | Asli Kobaner |
Grave location search | Aktina Stathaki, Amber Maes, Ans Van Gasse, Arkadi Zaides, Benjamin Pohlig, Bianca Frasso, Carolina-Maria Van Thillo, Doreen Kutzke, Elisa Franceschini, Elvura Quesada, Emma Gioia, Frédéric Pouillaude, Gabriel Smeets, Giorgia Mirto, Gosia Juszczak, Igor Dobricic, Joris Van Imschoot, Julia Asperska, Juliane Beck, Katia Gandolfi, Luca Lotano, Lucille Haddad, Maite Zabalza, Maria Sierra Carretero, Mercedes Roldan, Myriam Van Imschoot, Myrto Katsiki, Pepa Torres Perez, Sarah Leo, Simge Gücük, Sunniva Vikør Egenes, Yannick Bosc, Yari Stilo |
Technical director | Etienne Exbrayat |
Administration & production | Simge Gücük / Institut des Croisements |
International distribution | Koen Vanhove, Anna Skonecka |
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Key Performance Coproduction: Théâtre de la Ville (FR), Montpellier Danse 40 Bis (FR), Charleroi Danse (BE), CCN2 Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble (FR), les ballets C de la B (BE), Tanz im August / HAU Hebbel am Ufer (DE), La Filature – Scène nationale de Mulhouse (FR) | Residency support: CCN - Ballet de Lorraine (FR), STUK (BE), PACT Zollverein (DE), WP Zimmer (BE), Workspacebrussels (BE), Cie THOR (BE) | Support for experimentation: RAMDAM, un centre d'art (FR) |