Zoom

Benefitting from today’s handy technology we pretty much all have sitting in our coat pockets and handbags, Zoom utilizes cellular technology in a brilliantly clever, interactive way that I’ve never seen before.  The audience is encouraged to take photos of the performance, both from off stage and at one point on stage, with their cell phones and then text them to a phone number. Later, the photos appear on the screen behind the stage.  At a couple points, one of the dancers nestles up to a laptop on stage and begins chatting with audience members via their cell phones, the text of which appears on the large screen above.  There is a lot of texting lingo…  lots of Wazup? TTYL, tots, :-).  The entire experience is unique and highlights well the way in which cell phone technology has come to be another level, albeit disembodied, in which we communicate and dance with each other.

Zoom really wins me over in the last few moments, when two dancers jerk and jolt in a piece that speaks to our inability to genuinely contact each other even amidst so many electronic means of communication.

Mr. Gotheiner’s choreography is exceptional.  He seems to be as at home composing movement that is light and playful as he is composing movement that is dower, spastic and macabre.  Yet, all of it expresses something honest…  The ZviDance company members are also wonderfully relaxed and well trained, performing complex pieces with an ease and harmony that belies the difficulty.  Mr. Gotheiner, who is also a renowned teacher of dance, seems to have been able to help them achieve a certain peacefulness in their bodies that one doesn’t see a lot in contemporary dance.

All in all, Zoom is a great success because it contains a thrilling collection of contrasts – electronic communications and dancing bodies, pleasure and pain, buoyancy and gravitas. ZviDance can do it all.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Dustin Wood
Performance: Zoom by ZviDance
Choreographer(s): Zvi Gotheiner
Venue: Dance Theater Workshop
Date: April 10, 2010
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