Statements of the jury

ZKB Patronage Prize 2023: «L’homme rare» by Nadia Beugré

«With ‹L’homme rare›, Nadia Beugré and her team have created a liberating and joyful journey through landscapes of the human body in all of its strength and fragility. 

After welcoming us with a rousing opening, an exceptional tale of freedom unfolds between the dancers’ bodies. It succeeds in dismantling stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, layer by layer. Throughout the piece, the audience mostly sees the backside of the performers. The gaze, the face and the body front are withdrawn from view, which forces us to consider the question of the invisible, but also allows us to think beyond known ideas of gender and belonging. In an empowering and poetic way, it undoes the corset of set categories and reveals the body as an endlessly open canvas of meaning and identity.

Together with a remarkable ensemble of performers, the choreographer has created a unique performance language that is neither homogenising nor exoticising, but assembles different cultural legacies and languages to coexist side by side and yet contributes to one shared whole. Playfully and gently, the performers move between social and cultural metaphors, inviting infinite possibilities of interpretation: from ancient sculptures, motifs of past and present rituals to fabulous creatures. The simultaneity of different meanings and a diversity of expression help to dissolve lines of separation and offer an imagination of true connection. A liberation!»

ZKB Acknowledgement Prize 2023: «Sronoh & Snow White» by Khun Sreynoch & Ny Lai

«‹Sronoh & Snow White› begins where the pain is deepest and unravels it in the most touching way. The two-part performance starts with a ritual that commemorates and moans the bodies of women* who were victims of a historic atrocity in Cambodia. The visual language the artist duo Khun Sreynoch & Ny Lai use to approach first the traumatic history and then the present of their country is powerful, beautiful, yet delicate. They create a visual poetry of voices that can no longer be shared. With outstanding aesthetic precision and entirely without words, the artists have accomplished a unique artistic expression for the unspeakable. The multi-faceted use of simple props – fine chalk powder and a red lipstick – links the two performance parts like a leap in time, enveloping the dead and the living in a dance with each other. This is how the work provides a space for sisterhood and solidarity across generations, where contemporaries and spirits of ancestors meet, in Cambodia and beyond. At the same time, it also offers time and space for the audience to feel, process, contemplate and to find relevance in the subject matter. The performance has shown the artists’ great potential and, with this prize, we hope to encourage them to continue their courageous work.»