by Leigh Witchel
Zvi Gotheiner is a late-career artist who hasn’t had an easy late career. Two years ago, he suffered a stroke, and has heroically fought back, teaching classes and with the collaboration of a devoted group of dancers, choreographing. It’s not necessary to know this to watch his work, which stands on its own, beautifully wrought. The latest piece, “Migrations,” suggests less a journey than the mood of a single place.
There was nothing to look at but the work. The costumes by Gabrielle Grywalski, were designed to not call attention to themselves, and the stage was completely stripped bare. No soft goods, nothing.
Scott Killian’s tense music, which sounded like piano over synthesizer, opened. The cast of seven faced away from us in a line, stretching and reaching. The intimacy of their motions seemed almost as they were washing themselves.
The group broke apart slowly, almost into a V. With their arms spread at their sides, the dancers recalled the migration of the title: birds in flight. As the others marched past, Caitlin Javech did a solo that reached and spun round the space, then disappeared back into the group, which neatly crossed lines, four by three.
Matilda Mackey stood there as the score rumbled, to move into a solo of deep pliés and wide reaches before coming back in on herself. The vocabulary in “Migrations” was free; there was almost nothing you could give a classroom name to. Most every move came instead from natural flow of the body: running, jumping, tumbling, lifting and falling. If the vocabulary and phrasing was in soft-focus and less distinct, the work gained sharpness in its tight pacing and varied patterning.
Mackey moved into a trio to thumping music with Doron Perk and Nat Wilson as Leslie Merced watched, then swayed, to a synthesized organ. Merced’s movement was also free, but acrobatic: a one-handed walkover and back rolls to handstands.
As the music thumped low, Anson Zwingelberg and Mackey danced together, then Merced and Nicole Leung moved into a double solo. Merced lifted Leung, picking her up and spinning her round to low footfalls and isolated chords. They tracked one another, occasionally glancing with veiled suspicion before they left to opposite sides.
Wilson and Perk had the most evocative duet. Wilson began drawing an invisible line on the floor away from Perk. Perk came at him crouching like a tarantula with arms like feelers. Wilson’s response was to draw another line round and away from Perk, then another. Perk, who is also the company’s Associate Artistic Director, moved with an unchecked force that was fascinating in what turned out not to be a duet, but an observed solo. No matter the frenzied loping Perk did, Wilson responded by drawing another line.
A section for Leung amplified to her racing and jumping round the stage; then the group reformed with free phrases but clean patterning, in two neat lines of three and four.
Wilson started moving to synthesized organ and accordion with his hands on his shoulders, shaking his head. He rolled and struggled, before coming briefly into line with the rest of the cast. They all walked to the back and began a galloping march to strings. Breaking into smaller groups, trios, solos and duos, as throughout, the vocabulary was free, but the composition was closely structured.
Coming back together, they wandered as if dazed, into small jumps, and finally to an asymmetrical V, this time facing to the back. It wasn’t quite birds in flight; though Leung was the point, she was not at the center, but one off. The lights went to black as the cast slowly brought their raised hands down.
“Migrations” could have been repetitious, or looked aimless. Unlike Gotheiner’s last work, “The Art of Fugue,” even with the evocative title and the occasional bird and flight references, there wasn’t really a controlling metaphor to the dance. It was a mood piece. It’s a reasonable guess that some of the dance was formed serendipitously from the vagaries of schedules and rehearsal availability. But none of it felt that way. Unlike Twyla Tharp, where her best moments are when she ignores the rules, the pleasure in watching Gotheiner is the elegance with which he deploys his craft: La danse bien faite.
In his late career, coming tenaciously back to movement, no matter what the next steps and journeys are for Gotheiner, his craft hasn’t let him down.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Migrations” – ZviDance
New York Live Arts, New York, NY
November 3, 2022
Cover: ZviDance in “Migrations.” Photo credit © Alexander Sargent.
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