MOVERS & SHAPERS:
PODCAST No.96 –
Pavel Zuštiak
Release Date: 2.20.20
TO DOWNLOAD PODCAST OR LISTEN:
ABOUT PAVEL
Pavel Zuštiak (b. 1971) is a Slovak-American director, choreographer and designer living in NYC for the past twenty years. He is the 2015 Bessie Juried Award winner for his “poetic layering of movement and visual imagery, conceiving the stage as a decentralized world in which the corporeal body is the focus and canvas for a wide range of human expression.”
Zuštiak finds live performance and the corporeal body an ideal vehicle for ontological questions around perception and presence, fiction and utopia, physical and unseen. Often described as human and humane, his works merge the abstract aspects of dance with nonlinear qualities of “theatre of images” into interdisciplinary works both visually evocative and emotionally piercing.
Zuštiak has been presented in the US and Europe in venues such as the NYU Skirball, Cal Performances at UC Berkeley, Walker Art Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, American Dance Institute, New York Live Arts, PS122, COIL Festival, Abrons Arts Center, Baryshnikov Arts Center, La MaMa, Lake Placid Center for the Arts, Response Festival, Legion Arts, Archa Theatre, Bratislava in Movement, KIOSK Festival, Slovak National Theatre and State Theatre Kosice. Zuštiak’s work was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, The Jerome Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, Princess Grace Foundation-USA, National Performance Network, Department of Cultural Affairs City of New York, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and New Music USA.
Zuštiak has received fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation, Princeton Arts Fellowship, Guggenheim Foundation, MANCC, multiple Princeton Grace Foundation-USA awards and LMCC President’s Award. He has been an artist in residence at Bogliasco Foundation, MIT, Movement Research, Baryshnikov Arts Center, GIBNEY, American Dance Institute, Walker Art Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, Cowles Center, Vermont Performance Lab, LMCC, MANCC, Abrons Arts Center, Czech Center NY and Grotowski Institute.
Zuštiak is the director and founder of PalissimoCompany in NYC. He aspires to direct and choreograph large scale stage works in new music and contemporary theatre. His love of design led him also to interior design and real estate and directing transformations of houses and apartments. He is also a licensed real estate agent with Douglas Elliman.
www.palissimo.org
PRESS
Like many productions of Mr. Zustiak’s company, Palissimo, this one boasts compelling performers. The integration between the action, the imaginatively harsh lighting (by Joe Levasseur) and the ominous soundscape (by Christian Frederickson and Bobby McElver) is exceptionally tight.
Brian Seibert, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Ivan Talijanćic, BACHTRACK
ABOUT: MFA IN DANCE at RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
Guided by the belief that dance is a fundamental embodied practice for understanding the human condition in a globalized context, the MFA in Dance at Rutgers University establishes students as creatively literate world citizens who can develop interdisciplinary solutions to address complex contemporary issues. Our interdisciplinary approach is the hallmark of the MFA in Dance, offering working dance professionals the opportunity to study with award-winning dance artists, scholars, and educators.
Rutgers’ Dance Department Graduate Faculty, as well as guest artists and scholars such as Sondra Fraleigh and Pavel Zustiak, support the MFA in Dance degree’s goals of curricular integration of theory and practice towards developing each MFA students’ interdisciplinary praxis.
Applications are being accepted for the Summer 2020 cohort.
For more information: dance@mgsa.rutgers.edu or 848-932-1345.
LINKS
Website: Rutgers MFA in Dance
PODCAST INTERVIEW LINKS
Pina Bausch Cafe Muller and Rite of Spring
Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky
Helen Walkley
School for New Dance Development
Ashleigh Leite
Guggenheim Fellowship
PS 122
Palissimo at NYU Skirball
Lucy Dhegrae
Christian Frederickson
Podcast produced by: The Moving Architects
Interviewer: Erin Carlisle Norton
Theme Music: Adam Crawley whose music can be found at djplie.com
