Zvi Gotheiner Archives - TheaterScene.net

Zvi Gotheiner

ZviDance: MAIM (“Water” in Hebrew)

December 19, 2019

Israeli-born choreographer Zvi Gotheiner created "Maim ('Water' in Hebrew)," a somber meditation on water, drought, misery, community and survival for seven members of ZviDance, all brilliant dancers with clearly defined personalities. Somehow, in under an hour, Gotheiner managed to dredge up memories and images of his early life on a kibbutz and how valuable water was in the life of his community. That, added to the current climate crisis’ causing drastic drought concerns, stimulated him to produce "MAIM ('Water' in Hebrew)." [more]

ZviDance: Bear’s Ears & Detour

December 28, 2018

A five-day journey to Bear’s Ears National Monument in Utah in the company of other dancers, choreographers and Native Americans turned Gotheiner’s mind to more serious pursuits resulting in “Bear’s Ears” and “Detour,” two of his best works. Both display some influence of Native American dance forms, but only to focus Gotheiner’s creative energies on the emotional journeys of his dancers. Bear’s Ears is a national monument under attack by this government’s forces which want to open this area to mining and natural gas exploration, completely ignoring the deep spiritual associations with the Native Americans. [more]

ZviDance: Like

November 28, 2017

This time Gotheiner put his dancers through a faux competition that fell in mood somewhere between "Dancing with the Stars' and "Shark Tank," combining eager striving with off-handed sadism. Electronic gadgetry virtually turned the beautiful dancers into products that viewers in the NYLA Theater were inadvertently bidding on. [more]

ZviDance: Escher/Bacon/Rothko

July 1, 2015

Certainly, the ceaseless energetic intertwinements of the Escher section could allude to his eye-popping, busy canvases and the large rectangles of white light just might allude to Rothko’s famous wide bands of impeccably applied colors. In the Bacon section, dancers kept distorting their faces and bodies in modest approximations of the bizarre images in Bacon’s portraits: unsymmetrical, shockingly colored and ugly. [more]