The RESEARCH ACADEMY is an international platform based at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). It aims to develop artistic practices and foster research through the strong interaction between fellows, faculty members, the artistic community, and the general public. The RESEARCH ACADEMY seeks to explore artistic strategies of contemporary performance practices in order to ask how they speak back to the cultural and economic environment, the political landscape and social values.

“Tarantallegra” means ‘dancing feet spell’, a charm that induces another person’s legs to dance uncontrollably.

In 2016 the RESEARCH ACADEMY interrogates the affordances of language in the context of making performance.

The participants will take part in a series of artistic experiments to develop their own creative starting points, questions, methods and strategies for 'moving through words'. These experiments will include exposure to very different kinds of texts (poetry, story, rhetoric, description, instruction, recipes, etc) in small amounts and the generation of own and co-­created compositions through writing, reading, drawing, speaking, scoring, gesturing, act(ion)ing and moving. We will also engage with documentation, the recording and annotation of these experiments as a reflection on how they are made, what they produce and how they function with regard to evidence and imagination.

Applications are invited from artists and theorists working in the field of dance, theatre and performance
art. Places will be offered to 12 candidates.

Successful candidates from outside Switzerland will each be awarded a grant of CHF 500.-­‐
No other expenses will be covered.