Chasing a Ghost
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In Chasing a Ghost, Alexandra Bachzetsis continuously creates a double — a double body, a double sound, a double space, a double image. Challenging the choreographic archetype of the duet, Chasing a Ghost stages these doubles within a spectrum of violence and desire. Central to this duality, a double in of itself, is the notion of the uncanny: an estranging phenomenon in a seemingly ordinary context, but also the potential act of transgression as our repressed impulses and subconsciousness may at any time rupture into our experience of reality.
Chasing a Ghost encompasses a choreography for five dancers (including the artist herself), an original music score played live by two pianists, and a stage setting that shifts between live movement and moving image. These elements are in constant relationship to each other, but the connections between them are intentionally disturbed. As such, Bachzetsis transforms the duet into an unsettling image, the movement between two bodies a distressing and unexpected occurrence, a perpetual “folie-à-deux” that challenges how we look at ourselves and others.
is a choreographer and visual artist, based in Basel and Zurich. Her practice unfolds at the intersection of dance, performance, the visual arts and theatre, generating a conflation of the spaces in which the body, as an artistic and critical apparatus, can manifest.
Much of Bachzetsis’s work involves choreographies of the body and, in particular, the way that popular culture provides source material for gesture, expression, identification, and fantasy as we continually create and re-create our bodies and the way we identify. Her latest performances have been coproduced by Tate Modern, Documenta 14, MoMA NY, the Art Institute Chicago and Centre Pompidou.
Credits
Co-produced by Art Gallery of Ontario, Mudam Luxembourg, PACT Zollverein (Essen), Tanzquartier Wien, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Julidans (Amsterdam), Gessnerallee Zürich. This performance is a co-production in the frame of the Programmers’ Fund of Reso – Dance Network Switzerland, supported by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council.
In-kind Sponsorship: Yamaha Pianos, provided by Yamaha Artist Services (New York), Kwaidan Editions (London).
Additional thanks to Cynthia Leung, Edward Traskowski, Paul B. Preciado, Adam Szymczyk, Verena Bachzetsis, Jannis Tsingaris, André Desponds, Aphroditi Antoniou, Raphael Hefti, and Li Tavor.
60 minutes, no intermission
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