Chorea in Los Angeles – Rosanna Gamson/World Wide’s Tov

For three weeks in January and March, 2010, Chorea was working and developing creative cooperation with Rosanna Gamson/World Wide’s, that started after International Theater Workshop – Body, Voice, Rhythm conducted by Chorea in Łódź 2009. The performance – Tov (meaning “good”) – was choreographed and directed by Los Angeles-based artist Rosanna Gamson, Tov features a vocal score created by Chorea and sets and lights designed by Christopher Kuhl. Developed in the US and Poland with artists from both countries, Tov premiere was with a bi-national cast at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater Thursday, March 18, 2010 through Saturday, March 27, 2010.

Deftly weaving together intense physical movement, spoken word, vocal music, and the “theater laboratory” ensemble techniques originated by Jerzy Grotowski, Rosanna Gamson stages a profusely evocative dance drama around the story of the tarpan – an extinct species of Eurasian wild horse that was genetically “reassembled” in the 1930s through back-breeding of domestic horses. The Los Angeles choreographer braids this allegory of regeneration with reflections on the history of her own Polish-Jewish ancestors, horse traders from Szczecin, and the fate of Polish Jewry. Tov takes its title from “Gamzu l’tovah” (“This too is for the good”), a favorite saying of one of Gamson’s forebears, Talmudic scholar Nachum ish Gamzu, who found God’s hand even in tragedy. The full-evening work features a cast of fourteen American and three Polish performers, with text spoken and sung in Hebrew, Polish, English, Yiddish, Bulgarian and German.

Beyond its ambitious globalism, Tov was recognizably made in Los Angeles. It carried the local mellowness of spirit and pacing. It offered solace in L.A.-style multiculturalism. Astonishingly, for a piece evoking the Holocaust, it was kind-spirited. Indeed, Tov was good. So, mazel tov!

Debra Levine, Los Angeles Times