DANCE NOW Presents ZviDance In On The Road At Joe's Pub

As part of its Dance-mopolitan Featured Artist Series, DANCE NOW is pleased to present acclaimed choreographer Zvi Gotheiner's 2016 work On the Road, a multimedia dance piece inspired by Jack Kerouac's famed novel of the same name. Performances are Thursday through Saturday, April 25-27, at 7pm, at Joe's Pub.

Taking its cues from Kerouac's generation-defining novel, On the Road contemplates the general upheaval of the 1960s and the Beat Generation's notions of social rebellion. As research for the work, Gotheiner took four of his dancers and media artist Joshua Higgason on a two-week coast-to-coast road trip retracing Kerouac's route. Virtuosic in form and versatile in style, the resulting evening-length piece combines the exhilarating freedom of the road and the dynamism of music in a danced meditation on individuality and the startling new ways in which youth redefines self. Performed against the backdrop of Joshua Higgason's hypnotic video footage acquired along their journey, the work for seven dancers is set to an original score by composer Jukka Rintamäki. On the Road is performed by Chelsea Ainsworth, Alex Biegelson, Doron Perk, Isaies Santamaria Perez, Ying-Ying Shiau, Jessica Smith, and William Tomaskovic.

On the Road premiered at BAM's Next Wave Festival in November 2016. This latest iteration has been reimagined for Joe's Pub's intimate space.

Tickets are $20 in advance/$25 at the door. Tickets can be purchased by phone at 212-967-7555, online at joespub.com, and in person at The Public Theater box office from 2pm to 6pm. Joe's Pub at The Public is located at 425 Lafayette Street (between East 4th Street and Astor Place).

About the Artist

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. Gotheiner is also a renowned ballet teacher with a devoted following throughout the world. His work frequently touches upon relevant issues and themes around relationships and community. He has been described as much a "sociologist as dance-maker" (Alastair Macaulay, New York Times).

A prolific choreographer with over 35 works in the last 30 years, Gotheiner integrates original musical scores and evocative lighting designs with edgy multimedia and video projections. The renowned ZviDance creative team includes composers Scott Killian and Jukka Rintamäki; visual designers Josh Higgason and Herzog Nadler; and lighting designer Mark London. Gotheiner's collaborative approach extends to the dancers and is infused with a deep regard for the individual and their creative, aesthetic role within the ensemble. His company is admired for its elasticity, athleticism, and emotional expressivity.

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 a 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, so as to constantly push the methodology and ethics of a creation process within an interdisciplinary format.

In the last 25 years of its existence, ZviDance has received critical praise and stable funding for its artistic projects, work that fearlessly refuses to be bound by specific thematic or aesthetic dogma. The company performs frequently at home in such New York venues as the Brooklyn Academy Of Music (BAM), The Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts, and Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors. ZviDance has toured across North America to such festivals as Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival and The American Dance Festival, and abroad in Germany, Poland, Russia, Israel, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Japan.

About DANCE NOW

DANCE NOW is produced by directors Robin Staff, Sydney Skybetter, and Tamara Greenfield.

For 24 years DANCE NOW has bent the rules to offer all-inclusive destination events that reveal the bustling energy and innovation of New York City dance makers. Created in 1995 as a program of the Downtown Arts Festival, DANCE NOW launched in 1996 as an independent festival. Without a performance venue, DANCE NOW learned to embrace limitation as a powerful source for creativity. Seeking creative ways to bring dance and community together, DANCE NOW developed partnerships to connect new audiences to innovative dance makers. Presenting dance in venues both traditional and not, DANCE NOW designed all-inclusive destination events for drained swimming pools, firehouses, galleries, and Joe's Pub, where, in 2003 DANCE NOW introduced the Dance-mopolitan series. In 2005, DANCE NOW furthered its "less is more" mantra, creating a challenge initiative to encourage work marked by brevity, clarity, and effect. This inspired the commissioning of full-evening works specifically for the Pub, and the merging of all DANCE NOW programs to the Pub in 2011.

DANCE NOW's programming at Joe's Pub has defied the standard and encouraged artists to think outside the box and utilize the unique space, creating an inspiring new platform for dance. In the last decade, DANCE NOW has produced numerous critically acclaimed works at Joe's Pub including Doug Elkins's Fräulein Maria, David Parker's ShowDown, Misters and Sisters, and Head Over Heels, Nicholas Leichter's The Whiz and 20/20, Kyle Abraham's Heartbreaks and Homies, Nicole Wolcott and Vanessa Walters's Alley of the Dolls, Camille Brown's One Second Past the Future, Monica Bill Barnes's Snow Globes, Takehiro Ueyama's Somewhere Familiar Melodies, Claire Porter's Sent-ence, Mark Dendy's NEWYORKnewyork@Astor Place, Ellis Wood's The Juggler of Our Ladies and, most recently, Larry Keigwin and Nicole Wolcott's Places Please!

From a small festival series to four distinct programs, from NYC to Pennsylvania, DANCE NOW presents young innovators and emerging and maturing artists side by side, building relationships at varying stages of development and providing comprehensive assistance to advance creativity and new career paths. DANCE NOW Joe's Pub challenges artists to investigate new directions. DANCE NOW Raw funnels new artists into its programs. DANCE NOW Silo and DANCE NOW SteelStacks provide paid teaching, residencies, and commissioning and performing opportunities through partnerships with DeSales University, Muhlenberg College, Lehigh Valley Charter School, and ArtsQuest at SteelStacks in Bethlehem, PA.

DANCE NOW is supported, in part, with funds from the Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and The National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information, visit dancenownyc.org,

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