Creators: Rosanna Gamson Word Wide, CHOREA Theatre
Direction and choreography: Rosanna Gamson
Music: Fryderyk Chopin, Controlled Bleeding, Stuart Dempster, Michael Galasso, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Traditional music arranged by: Tomasz Krzyżanowski
Light and stage design: Christopher Kuhl
Cast (in Poland): Rachel Butler-Green, Michał Gośliński (kontratenor), Elina Toneva, Suna Lavinia Findikoglu, Alexandria Yalj, Carin Noland, Tomasz Rodowicz, Dominika Krzyżanowska Gorzkiewicz, Joanna Jaworska (Pracownia Fizyczna), Ula Parol (Pracownia Fizyczna), Paweł Grala (Pracownia Fizyczna), Adrian Bartczak, Adrianna Binkowska, Tomasz Kowalski, Małgorzata Lipczyńska, Julia Jakubowska, Michalina Kobylińska
Premiere date in USA: 18.03.2010, Disney / Callarts Theatre - RedCat, Los Angeles
Premiere date in Poland: 17-18.08.2012, Nowy Theatre, Lodz
Rosanna Gamson and CHOREA’s performance is a dance and music drama spun around the story of tarpans – an extinct species of wild horses, which were genetically reconstructed in the 1930s in Germany. The initiative coincided with the Hitler’s plan of extermination of Jews and ‘racial cleansing’ of Europe. The American choreographer used this story as a metaphor of regeneration, relating it to her own Polish-Jewish roots and turbulent lives of her ancestors who were Polish Jews from Szczecin and traded in salt transported on small horses... Tov takes its title from ‘Gamzu l'tovah’ (‘This too is for the good’), a favourite saying of one of Gamson's forebears, Talmudic scholar Nachum Ish Gamzu, who found God's hand even in tragedy. However, this is not a play about the Holocaust. The play does not concern only one nation. It mixes words and songs in Polish, English, Yiddish, Bulgarian, Hebrew and German. It is a play of survival, of people who left a place where they cannot come back, so they still go somewhere. ‘Ultimately, we go on, one generation to the next. That's why my daughter Delilah is in the piece. I think it's the best thing I can say, that we continue.’ (Rosanna Gamson)
In June 2009, in Łódź, a session of the CHOREA’s international theatrical workshops ‘Alphabets of the Stage’ took place. It was the first meeting and the beginning of cooperation between CHOREA and the Los Angeles choreographer Rosanna Gamson. In January 2010, at Rosanna Gamson’s invitation, Tomasz Rodowicz, Elina Toneva, Dominika Krzyżanowska and Tomasz KrzyżanowskiRosanna organized a weekly working session for American actors and dancers in Los Angeles. On 9.01.2010, thanks to the hospitality of Rosanna Gamson/World Wide and REDCAT, a show summarising the workshop and the CHOREA technique presentation were organised. Rosanna Gamson invited CHOREA to cooperate in creation of the Tov project. The CHOREA’s task was to enrich the play with live music and movements relating to songs, musical development of dancers and opening their voices, as well as creating characters which complemented outlined tensions and images.
