Vahram Zaryan is a French performance artist, mime, dancer, director, and choreographer of Armenian descent.
Biography
Zaryan studied theatre, body movement, and dance at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Armenia. There, he specialized in mime, beginning his apprenticeship at the State Theater of Pantomime in Yerevan under the direction of Zhirayr Dadasyan. Zaryan moved to the Paris Opera, where he studied classical dance with Yves Casati, and Decroux technique with Yvan Bacciocchi at the Studio of Belleville. Zaryan advanced his studies at the École Internationale de Mimodrame de Marcel Marceau, being one of the last students to receive a degree from this school. Zaryan was an intern and took graduate courses with Ariane Mnouchkine, Carolyn Carlson, and Maurice Béjart. Zaryan founded "Le Théâtre Suspendu", a company of mimes, with other Marcel Marceau school graduates. This company performed signature pieces such as Sépia Quartet, and Le Linge Entre Autres, both in France and abroad. At his company's debut, Zaryan interpreted the role of the "white mime". He performed this and other roles at a gala at the Palais Garnier. The gala was staged in honor of the director Sergei Parajanov. The program was a theatrical rendition of this master of Soviet cinema's film, The Color of Pomegranates. Zaryan also interpreted, to critical success, the role of "Vespone" in the Pergolesi opera, La Serva Padrona at the Theater of the Tambour Royal in Paris.
NON-MIME
Vahram Zaryan is the pioneer and inventor of a new movement and genre in the art of mime called "Non-Mime". This notion is invented and developed by Vahram Zaryan and his collective to think and create a contemporary approach of miming even more as a new discipline of this classical genre.
Compagnie Vahram Zaryan
Zaryan founded the troupe, "Compagnie Vahram Zaryan". Its focus is the development of new mime and contemporary movement theater. Zaryan created the work, Confessions. The work has been presented in France and across Europe. In 2010, it was performed at the official closing ceremony of International Mime Festival in Tsakhkadzor. Soon after, Zaryan's work, Mater Replik played at L'Atelier du Plateau in Paris. It toured in Europe; in the United States at New York City's Richmond Shepard Theatre; and in Russia at La Tete en Bas. In 2012, Zaryan's company was staging the Noëlle Châtelet novel, The Head Down as a contemporary mime show. In 2012 and 2013, the Vahram Zaryan Company was associated with Monfort Theatre, Cultural Institution of the City of Paris, and participated in projects funded by the DAC workshops and DASCO, City of Paris.
Performance art
Zaryan makes performance art in museums and international contemporary art galleries. He collaborated with Nina Childress in her work, Rideau Vert at the Gallery of Bernard Jordan in Paris. He has also staged a performance directed by Dramatic Corporeal Mime and taken from Etienne Decroux. Vahram Zaryan creates a video art performance during Melik Ohanian's "Stutterig" exhibition at the CRAC de Sète at Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris in 2015.
