ZviDance (Zvi Gotheiner, Choreographer and Artistic Director) presents Migrations, an evening-length dance performance collaboration between Zvi Gotheiner, composer Scott Killian, lighting designer Mark London, and seven dancers. Migrations is in line with Gotheiner's previous works that reflect on the collision of humanity with nature. In Migrations, Gotheiner will focus his creative attention on bird migration imagery and tendencies as a poetic mirroring for the current acceleration of human migration as a result of wars and the diminishing of life-sustaining resources due to global warming. Bird's migration patterns are made in response to changes in food availability, habitat, or weather. These days, war is displacing people in Ukraine and the world is experiencing another wave of refugees. These concepts serve as a point of departure for the creation of Migrations. The choreography utilizes bird's flocking imagery in the design of large group work, and flight imagery for the creation of trios and duets. Killian's cinematic electronic score supports a sense of heroic struggle when traveling through the elements, while London's light design will create landscapes that give the work a transitory sense of place.

 

Migrations will have a live staged premiere on November 3-5, 2022 (Thu and Fri at 7:30pm, Sat at 2pm and 7:30pm) at at New York Live Arts, 219 W 19th St., New York, NY. Tickets are $25 general admission and $18 for students and seniors and are available for purchase at newyorklivearts.org/event/migrations.

 

Dancers: Doron Perk, Matilda Mackey, Nat Wilson, Caitlin Javech, Anson Zwingelberg, Nicole Leung, Lesley Merced

 

"One does not just watch a dance by Zvi Gotheiner. One enters a world with its own internal logic, a sensual, organic world of movement, language, and images where one is pulled along by currents unseen and inevitable." - Dance Magazine

 

Zvi Gotheiner (Artistic Director) was born and raised in kibbutz Mesilot in northern Israel. He began his artistic career as a gifted violinist with the Young Kibbutzim Orchestra, where he attained the rank of soloist and Concertmaster. He began dancing at 17 and soon after formed his first performance group. He joined the Bat-Sheva Dance Company after serving in the army. Zvi arrived in New York in 1978 on a dance scholarship from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and danced with the Joyce Trisler Dance Company and Feld Ballets/NY. After directing Tamar Ramle and the Jerusalem Tamar Dance Company in Israel and the Israeli Chamber Dance Company in New York, he founded ZviDance in 1989. He has created more than 25 works for his Company, among them DABKE, which was named by The New York Times as one of the ten best dance works of 2013. Zvi is a highly regarded ballet teacher, described by The New York Times as the "Zen Dance Master of New York." Most recently Zvi received Distinguished Teaching Awards from the American Dance Festival and the Kaatsbaan International Dance Center's Playing Field.

 

ZviDance exists to share with audiences the choreographic vision and movement vocabulary of Israeli-born Artistic Director, Zvi Gotheiner. Each piece defines a unique set of relationships and experiences, boldly addressing the depths of the human experience. ZviDance also exists to engage students in enriching their appreciation of the art form. ZviDance brings its audiences a passionate vision of community in a modern age. A collaborative alliance among artists, the company's stirring work celebrates diversity by melding movement genres into the distinct dance vocabulary constantly evolving and refusing to succumb to dialectics of the medium. The company is shaped by a collaborative model of creation, involving the ensemble and designers from the initial research phase, to constantly push the methodology and ethics of a creation process within an inter-disciplinary format. In the last 30 years of existence, ZviDance has received critical praise and stable funding for its artistic projects, a work that fearlessly refuses to be bounded to specific thematic or aesthetic dogma. The company performs frequently at home in such New York venues as the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts and Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors. ZviDance has toured across North America to festivals such as Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival and The American Dance Festival, and abroad to Germany, Poland, Russia, Israel, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Japan.