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In her new solo performance Rush(es), Alexandra Bachzetsis situates the Self within autofiction, autoeroticism and autodocumentation. Envisioned as an introspective journey, the performance challenges taboos of behavior and explores the commodified nature of desire as it is both constructed and deconstructed by the dancing body.
Rush(es) is characterised by rapid transformations that push the body to its limits, reflecting pleasure, joy, solitude, anxiety through the intense physicality of the performer. In the process of corporeal metamorphosis, Bachzetsis navigates her body so that it ceases to be human and morphs into something else – an animal, an object, a tool.
In this solo performance, the audience is invited to perceive, examine and experience these physical transformations as a reflection of the collective consciousness. Rush(es) thus aims to evoke intuitive, immediate responses to music, space, text, and the actions of the body, taking both performer and audience into a heightened state of awareness and transformation.
Duration ca. 60 Min
Biography
Alexandra Bachzetsis is a choreographer and visual artist, based in Zurich (CH). Her practice unfolds at the intersection of dance, performance, the visual arts and theater, generating a conflation of the spaces in which the body, as an artistic and critical apparatus, can manifest.
Much of Bachzetsis’ work involves choreographies of the body, focusing on the ways in which popular culture provides source material for gesture, expression, identification, and desire as we continually create and re-create our bodies and the way we identify through them. Within this, she scrutinizes the mutual influence between the use of gesture and movement in “popular” or “commercial” genres on the one hand and in the “arts” on the other hand. For Bachzetsis, the relationship between these varying forms and genres produce an inquiry into the human body and its potential for transformation. Ultimately, the way we all perform and stage our bodies and ourselves – through stereotypes and archetypes, through choice and cliché, through labor and spectacle – is a question that continues to shape her work.
Since 2001, she has created over 30 works, presented at established institutions including Centre Pompidou, MoMA New York, Tate Modern, the Art Institute of Chicago, Kunsthaus Zürich, and documenta 13 and 14. Her recent projects include Notebook (2023) a commission for Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Exposure (2024), a collaboration with Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm; and Rush(es) (2025), a commission for Centre Pompidou performed at Grand Palais in Paris, which will premiere at Kunsthaus Zurich in 2025.
Credits
CONCEPT / CHOREOGRAPHY / PERFORMANCE: Alexandra Bachzetsis
CONCEPT / DRAMATURGY: Dorota Sajewska
TEXTS BY: Lee Lozano © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
CONCEPTUAL ADVISOR: Stephen Thompson
MOVEMENT DIRECTOR: Agnieszka Sjökvist Dlugoszewska
MUSIC COMPOSITION AND SOUND DESIGN: Alban Schelbert
BASS CLARINET: Florian Walter
COSTUME DESIGN: Laurent Hermann Progin
SET DESIGN: Alexandra Bachzetsis, Ivan Wahren
LIGHT AND VIDEO DESIGN: Ivan Wahren
TECHNICAL DIRECTION: Ivan Wahren, Patrick Rimann
PRESS PHOTOGRAPHY: Estelle Hanania, Crista Leonard, Piotr Niepsuj
PRODUCTION / STUDIO MANAGEMENT: All Exclusive, Caroline Krieg
STUDIO, ARCHIVE AND COMMUNICATION: Jean-Marie Fahy
TOUR MANAGEMENT: Laurent Hermann Progin
PUBLICATION PROJECT FOR RUSH(ES)
PHOTOGRAPHY: Piotr Niepsuj, Crista Leonard, Estelle Hanania
PUBLISHED AND PRODUCED: EDIZIONI C/O BARDI EDITED BY: Marina Montresor
GRAPHIC DESIGN: Cabinet Milano
SUPPORTED BY: Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Fachstelle Kultur Kanton Zurich, Stadt Zürich Kultur, Erna und Curt Burgauer Stiftung, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, E. und O. Gubler-Halblützel Stiftung, Landis & Gyr Stiftung, Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim-Stiftung
Grateful for the generous support and contribution from the Circle of Friends
COPRODUCED WITH: Centre Pompidou and the Centre Culturel Suisse à Paris, Kaserne Basel, Arsenic Centre d’art scénique contemporain Lausanne, Kunsthaus Zurich, Theaterhaus Gessnerallee Zurich, EDIZIONI C/O BARDI
SPECIAL THANKS: Christine Binswanger, Alexandra Blättler, Julia Born, Björn Glaus, Nicole Schmidt, Adam Szymczyk, Mirjam Varadinis, Sotiris Vasiliou, Charlotte von Stotzingen, Noémie Weill, Michał Woliński, Experimenter Gallery, Karma International Gallery, Komuna Warsawa, kurimanzutto Gallery, Meyer-Riegger Gallery, Piktogram Gallery
