Arkadi Zaides was born in the Soviet Union in 1979, and immigrated to Israel in 1990. He danced in Batsheva Dance Company and in Yasmeen Godder Dance group. Since 2004 he has been working as a free-lance choreographer. Today he lives and works in Tel Aviv. His works are being shown extensively in Israel and worldwide.
In 2008 and in 2009 Arkadi was awarded Israel’s Ministry of Culture Prize for young artist of the year in the field of dance. In 2010 he has been awarded the prestigious Kurt Jooss award for his choreography ‘Solo Colores’ as well as other national and international prizes including .
Embedded in Arkadi’s work is a belief that the role of art is to challenge and inspire viewers, while simultaneously it has a larger universal role to reach out and bring together different communities and different sectors of society. Arkadi is increasingly working in diverse communities, focusing primarily on the Arab sector in Israel.
Since 2009 Arkadi Zaides is the curator of ‘New Dance Project’ at the Performance Art Arena in Jerusalem together with the choreographer Anat Danieli. New Dance Project is a developing platform which designed to be a fertile environment for artists in the field of dance to grow and develop. The project provides young creators with mentoring, production assistance, financial support, master classes led by choreographers and theorists from Israel and abroad, and the opportunity to participate in a new discourse between artists and audiences about dance practice and dance making.