Movers & Shapers: Pavel Zuštiak

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.