Zoe Rabinowitz

Gathering is an invitation, it’s a party, a protest, a celebration of harvest, the championship game. Gathering is a night of storytelling and play that is part staged work, part improvisational score. Produced and performed by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (Palestine/NYC) and directed/composed by Samar Haddad King, Gathering was commissioned as part of the 2023-24 Open Call Series at The Shed where premiered in June 20-22, 2024. We held creative residencies in April, 2023 at The Shed and Snug Harbor Cultural Center (Staten Island) as part of the CUNY Dance Initiative.

Learn more and watch the trailer here.

This is How We Remember is a full length work about holding the reality of loss and suffering alongside the beauty and thrill of being alive. Featuring original movement performed by Mary McGrath and Zoe Rabinowitz, choreography by Zoe Rabinowitz in collaboration with Mary McGrath, new music score by Galen Bremer, video by Bremer and Rabinowitz and lighting design by Connor Sale. The work bears witness to deterioration and transformation over time, inspired by the artists' experience with Alzheimer's disease.

World Premiere: November 17 & 18, 2022 at Triskelion Arts with additional performances at Philadelphia Fringe Festival September 21 & 22, 2024.

This is How We Remember was commissioned by Triskelion Arts and sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).

Watch the trailer here.

Created by Samar Haddad King and produced by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre in partnership with St. Ann’s Warehouse, The Walk Productions and Handspring Puppet Company, this traveling site-specific performance for Lower Manhattan featured over 60 local dancers (including youth, pre-professional and professional artists), parkour performers and live musicians. Part of Little Amal Walks NYC, a series of 55 events of welcome for Amal, a 12-foot-tall puppet of a Syrian refugee girl, this athletic site specific work explores the power and strength of young immigrants as they face the reality of pursuing life in America, often against great obstacles.

October 1, 2022 at 1pm, The Charging Bull Statue, NYC

Last Ward follows one man’s journey towards death in a hospital. Surrounded by the sterile mechanisms of modern medicine, the patient reflects on his life, relationships and connection to place, as the ritual of doctor visits and family calls transform into an increasingly bizarre landscape of tragedy and humor.

Written/directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi with choreography/music by Samar Haddad King and performed by an international cast, Last Ward blends dance and theater (in Arabic with English subtitles) in a highly-visual evening-length performance.

May 5-12, 2022 at The White Box, Gibney, New York, NY

Read the NYTimes Review

This online video presentation of My Future is Turtle culminated a month-long residency at Judson Church awarded to myself and collaborator Galen Bremer in February 2021. The work and talk back are available online here.

12 Journeys. 8 Countries. One dance film experience. Produced by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre and Created by award-winning Director Eimi Imanshi and Choreographer Samar Haddad King, 3 x 13 explores the singularity of the individual and the universality of the human experience. In 12 short films, 12 artists from around the globe share a journey of transformation that deeply marked their lives. This piece premiered in February 2021, and remains available online at: https://3x13film.ysdt.org/

My Future is Turtle is an ongoing exploration of the nature of reality, and the various ways that we seek and make meaning in the world as individuals and groups. Research for this project to date has involved fields and systems ranging from quantum theory to tarot, astrology, Buddhism, improvisation, chance operations and genealogy. The project was first developed in residency at LAKE Studios Berlin, in collaboration with sound and video artist Galen Bremer. Video footage - inspired by the three defining tenants of reality outlined by quantum physicist Carlo Rovelli as: relationality, granularity and indeterminacy - was collected from the natural world and brought into the studio in conversation with live movement, music and text. In Janaury 2020, My Future is Turtle was presented at Triskelion Arts as part of the Never Before Never Again Festival (guest curated by The Lovelies) in Brooklyn, NY.

In October-November, 2019, I participated in residencies with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre at Middlebury College (VT) and Jacob’s Pillow (MA) for the final creative process for Last Ward, and led a lecture and masterclass at UMass Boston. Each residency included lectures, workshops, and work-in-progress showings that were free and open to the public.

On October 12 & 13, 2019 I performed a site-specific adaptation of my solo, Weft, with music by Galen Bremer at Marrowbone in the mountains of Lincoln, VT.