ZviDance Presents the World Premiere of DANDELION
Company:
ZviDance
ZviDance presents DANDELION from November 13-15, 2025 at New York Live Arts, 219 W. 19th Street, NYC, 10011 as part of New York Live Arts Independent Works. Tickets start at $30 for Standard Admission, $20 for Student/Senior, and can be purchased here.
DANDELION is a continuation and deepening of choreographer Zvi Gotheiner’s thematic exploration of the collisions between humanity and nature. A collaboration among Gotheiner, composer Scott Killian, lighting designer Mark London, and six dancers– Chelsea Ainsworth, Colin Heininger, Mizuho Kappa, Erin Maher, Tessa Russ, Joe Tennis–the piece explores society’s senseless perception of normalcy and beauty, and the repercussions of the impulse to eradicate ‘imperfections.’
In March 2021, Gotheiner experienced a life-changing event, a stroke that paralyzed his left side. Since then, he has honed new methods of collaboration in his creative practice of making dance. With the creation of DANDELION, Gotheneiner began the ensemble piece by working individually with each dancer, developing his process of translating movement and verbal communication, while managing movement limitations and recovery in his own physical body.
About Zvi Gotheiner
Internationally acclaimed choreographer Zvi Gotheiner is the Artistic Director of ZviDance. Praised for a signature innovative style and fascinating melding of artistic mediums, his work is recognized as radical, contemporary dance theater, ground-breaking, thoughtful yet passionate, with lush movement. Zvi is also a renowned ballet teacher with a devoted following throughout the world, hailed by the New York Times as The Zen Dance Master of New York.
His work frequently touches upon relevant issues and themes around relationships and community. He has been described “as much sociologist as dance-maker” (Alastair Macaulay, New York Times),
A prolific choreographer with over 35 works in the last 30 years, Zvi integrates exciting original musical scores, and evocative lighting designs, with edgy multi-media and video projections. The ZviDance renowned creative team includes composers Scott Killian and Jukka Rintamak; visual designers Josh Higgason and Herzog Nadler; and lighting designer Mark London. His collaborative approach extends to the dancers and is infused with deep regard for the individual and their creative, aesthetic role within the ensemble. His company is admired for its elasticity, athleticism, and emotional expressivity.
Zvi has created numerous commissioned works for prestigious companies, institutions and universities around the world, including Repertory Dance Theatre Utah, GroundWorks Dance Theatre, Juilliard Dance New Dances, Princeton, NYU, Ohio State University, University of Washington, Bard College, Vassar College.
Born in Israel, the musically gifted young Zvi encountered a performance of the Batsheva Dance Company that forever changed his life, inviting him “into a world of fantasy and self-definition”. As a young dancer/choreographer, he was discovered by the legendary Gertrud Kraus, who took him under her wing. Following a dance scholarship with the America-Israeli Cultural Foundation, he began dancing throughout the world with Batsheva Dance Company, Joyce Trisler, Eliot Feld, among others.
He founded the Tamar Ramle Dance Company, a herald of the Israel dance fringe movement, and later directed the Tamar Jerusalem Dance Company. Increasingly drawn to New York City, he moved in 1988, and in 1989 founded ZviDance.
About ZviDance
Guided by the choreographic vision of Zvi Gotheiner, for over 30 years ZviDance has made work that fearlessly refuses to be bound to specific thematic or aesthetic dogma. Each piece boldly addresses the depths of the human experience with a passionate vision of community in the modern age. A collaborative alliance among artists, the company’s stirring work celebrates diversity by melding movement genres into distinct dance vocabulary constantly evolving and refusing to succumb to the dialectics of the medium. 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. www.zvidance.com/
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