Artistic residency in September 2026
Open rehearsal + talk on September 14 at 6:30 PM
Teatro Biblioteca Quarticciolo
Starting from Nicolas Poussin’s famous painting (1638), now at the Louvre, ET IN ARCADIA EGO transforms the canvas into a living scenic device. If in the painting four figures contemplate a tomb inscription, on stage four artists interrogate the painting itself, reactivating its tension between utopia and death in a present marked by militarization, algorithmic surveillance, and new forms of remote violence.
Arkadi Zaides turns his gaze to the West Bank and the Negev, where pastoral life becomes a target of Israeli colonial violence, reflecting on the absence of the sheep — the arcadian figure par excellence — from Poussin’s painting. Olivier Marboeuf evokes a sugarcane plantation in the French Caribbean, populated by carnivalesque skeletons resurfacing from the memory of slavery. Lázara Rosell Albear travels along the Cuban coastline, seemingly idyllic landscapes marked by colonization and extraction, investigating how these histories are inscribed in the body through sound and rhythm. Weaving the three paths together is dramaturg Igor Dobričić, who brings onstage a material and digital reproduction of the painting, opening a dialogue between art, the market, and documentary reality.
Finally, game designer Victor Morales transforms the painted tomb into an interface: the scene dissolves into a navigable virtual environment, where the performers become characters in a video game, mirroring contemporary logics of targeting and remote control.
Choreography, live music, narration, and new technologies turn the stage into a training ground for critical attention, where the mechanisms of violence are exposed and responsibility is reintroduced.
Choreography and direction: Arkadi Zaides
Dramaturgy: Igor Dobričić
Artists/performers: Igor Dobričić, Olivier Marboeuf, Lázara Rosell Albear, Arkadi Zaides
Visuals and video game development: Victor Morales
Technical direction: Etienne Exbrayat
Stage, video and sound direction: Stéphane Leclercq
Creative production: Simge Gücük
Administration: Institut des Croisements
Executive production: laGeste
International distribution: Johannes Maile / partner in crime
Co-production: Agora, cité internationale de la danse (FR), Charleroi Danse (BE), Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm (DE), La Place de la Danse CDCN Toulouse Occitanie as part of accueil-studio (FR), STUK (BE), Orbita|Spellbound Centro di Produzione Nazionale per la Danza (IT) Research residency: La Vignette, scène conventionnée, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier (FR)
Arkadi Zaides is an associate artist at Agora, Cité Internationale de la Danse in Montpellier. For this creation, Arkadi Zaides is hosted at Agora, Cité Internationale de la Danse with the support of the Fondation BNP Paribas. Institut des Croisements is supported by the DRAC Occitanie and the Région Occitanie.
Arkadi Zaides is a choreographer, performer, and researcher. Born in Belarus, he currently resides in France. He danced with various companies in Israel, including the Batsheva Dance Company and the Yasmeen Godder Dance Group, before launching his independent career in 2004. He holds a master’s degree from the AHK Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam, a PhD in Arts (Dance) from the University of Antwerp, and a PhD in Arts (Dramaturgy) from Ghent University, where he is also a guest professor. From 2024 to 2027 he is an associate artist at Agora – Cité Internationale de la Danse in Montpellier. His performances and installations have been presented in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. He has received several awards, including the Emile Zola Prize for Performing Arts for his commitment to human rights in his work ARCHIVE (2014). Among other projects, he co-curated Violence of Inscriptions (2015–2018) together with scholar, curator, and dramaturg Sandra Noeth. This initiative brought together artists, thinkers, and human rights activists to explore the role of the body in producing, maintaining, legitimizing, representing, and aestheticizing structural violence.