Choreographic Gestures of Resurgence and Repair: Arkadi Zaides’s research-based performance project:Necropolis
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: With the Institut des Croisements, choreographer, dancer and curator Arkadi Zaides unfolds a continuing engagement in human rights issues. His latest performance, Necropolis, considers the ‘movements of people who are systematically and brutally stopped by border policies’ (Zaides in Noeth 2020: 51). The starting point of every performance is extensive research into local cases of deaths of migrants. An important aspect of Necropolis lies in the choreographic gestures of care for these dead, performed by everything and everyone involved in the research-based performance and the long-durational performance project. In this contribution, I trace the critical, reparative and resurgent potential of these choreographic gestures of care for and with the dead. With the notion of resurgence, which I borrow from anthropologist Anna Tsing, I expand the notion of repairing to agency of ‘dead’ material. Following Donna Haraway’s New Materialist rendering of Tsing’s concept of resurgence, the choreographic gestures of resurgence and repair in Necropolis are of particular value in the scorched, parched, drowned and infected landscape we currently inhabit.
Source: Performance Research
Author: Christel Stalpaert
Institution: Ghent University
Language: English
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4285377603