Alexandra Bachzetsis

The choreographer and visual artist, Alexandra Bachzetsis creates spaces – at the intersection of dance, performance, visual arts, and theater – in which the body can manifest as an artistic and critical apparatus. Her work investigates the choreographies of the body and how culture provides source material for our gestures, expressions, and fantasies; through an interdisciplinary approach, she examines the influence of ‘popular’ or ‘commercial’ genres (online media, video-clips, and television) and the ‘arts’ (ballet, modern dance, and performance). The way we inhabit and perform our body, both in everyday life and on stage – through stereotypes and archetypes, choice and cliché – is a question that continues to shape her practice. In her performances, Bachzetsis addresses stereotyped modes of representation of the female body in popular culture, show business, and the sex industry, using them to build a new self-reflexive and empowering formal language.
Bachzetsis is a graduate of the Liceo Artistico in Zurich (1995) and the Accademia Teatro Dimitri in Verscio (1997), in Switzerland; the Performance Education Program at STUK – House for Dance, Image & Sound Arts Center in Leuven, Belgium (1999); and DAS Graduate School at the Academy of Theater and Dance of the Amsterdam University of the Arts (2006).
She has been the recipient of various awards, including the Performancepreis Schweiz (Swiss Performance Art Award) (2012), Swiss Art Award 2011, and the Migros-Kulturprozent Jubilee Award (2007). Since Bachzetsis started working independently in 2001, she has created over 30 pieces which have been shown in venues worldwide like MoMA New York, Stedelijk Museum, Tate Modern, Jumex Museum, ImPULSTanz Vienna, Julidans Amsterdam, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, MUDAM Luxembourg.