Highlights Performing ArtsHighlights Performing Arts

In September 2024, Tanz Akademie Zürich and the Bachelor Contemporary Dance came together for the first time to collaborate with renowned choreographer Shahar Binyamini on his electrifying creation ‘Bolero X’. What began as a project for the end-of-year performance soon evolved into an exceptional journey for the participating students.

Performed by fifty dancers, the piece ‘BoleroX’  unfolds through solos, duets, and powerful ensemble moments, an explosion of rhythm, energy, and emotion that celebrates the strength of moving as one. After months of shared rehearsals and countless hours in the studio, the group toured with Shahar Binyamini’s company, House of Dance, premiering in April 2025 at Bregenzer Frühling 2025 in Austria. Their performance received standing ovations from the 1,600 audience. The tour continued across Switzerland, including performances at the Opernhaus Zürich and Kurtheater Baden, and culminated at Italy’s Festival dei Due Mondi di Spoleto, where the dancers performed under the stars in a centuries-old amphitheatre. Two final performances at The Valley Kemptthal concluded the collaboration, while two Tanz Akademie students joined Shahar Binyamini in Tokyo, assisting and performing at Bunkamura Orchard Hall.

This collaboration united ZHdK’s two Dance programmes, thereby fostering artistic growth as well as creating lasting friendships. It demonstrates how dance can act as a universal language of connection and transformation. 

Virtual production has become an indispensable feature in the film and media production industry with film schools around the word including it in their curricula. Over the past years, ZHdK has invested in an innovative production facility featuring motion capture, an LED Wall, and cineDESK, thus offering its students state-of-the-art equipment to gain hands-on experience with tools shaping the future of visual storytelling.

In 2024, ZHdK’s Film profile introduced a new Minor in Virtual Production, designed to bridge the gap between traditional filmmaking and cutting-edge digital technologies. On the course, students get to improve and apply their knowledge of mixed worlds and learn to connect virtual and real elements in film and animation. They thereby develop the skills needed to meet the demands of a rapidly growing industry for future-oriented productions in film and visualisation.

CineDESK, a pre-visualisation tool developed by ZHdK, continues to evolve through an international network of partner institutions which was established by ZHdK. The success of cineDESK and the international collaborations it fostered led to ZHdK’s involvement in FilmEU, the European Universities Alliance for Film and Media Arts, culminating in the Department of Performing Arts and Film becoming an associated partner in early 2024.

In the Fall 2024, ZHdK launched its newly designed MA in Theatre (MATch) with 14 students from 8 different countries. One year on, the programme has welcomed its second cohort and further manifested its goal of becoming a hub of emerging artists from around the globe who not only follow a diverse course programme but learn from the encounter with each other and their wide range of cultural and aesthetic theatre and performance traditions.

Offering MATch in English not only promotes the internationality but equally contributes to the diversity of the programme. The course draws on an expanded understanding of theatre, focusing on experimental formats and aesthetic research methods, bringing together experienced artists, researchers and educators from diverse backgrounds. With its interdisciplinary approach and emphasis on collaborative, artistic working methods, the Master programme creates a unique meeting place for artists from different fields of theatre practice such as dramaturgy, acting, directing and scenography. The MATch programme also hosts a Global South Scholarship exchange student from Witswatersrand University in Johannesburg each year, thus expanding its global reach.