The Gift/No God Logic (1987)

The Gift/No God Logic, set to music from Verdi's Forza del Destino, is a beautiful, sparse work choreographed by Arnie Zane.  The dance develops through a strikingly restrained and precise physical vocabulary.  Dancers move together and apart, but always with compassion and awareness of one another.  The apparent simplicity of the work belies its technical difficulty.  To quote Jennifer Dunning in her 1988 review of the work, “It is a dance of memorable simplicity and un-ironic emotion.”

Choreographer: Arnie Zane
Music: Giuseppe Verdi (Selections from La Forza del Destino)
Cast size: 4 (based on 3 men and 1 woman)
Length: 13 minutes
 

Skills developed:
• • Partnering and full-bodied weight-sharing
• • Performing as a community of dancers
• • Musicality

Complementary classes:
• • Technique class focusing on embodying shape, bound flow and strong weight
• • Partnering

Recently reconstructed at:
• • University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• • University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

“The Gift is a gorgeous piece and deserves to be continued. It will be ever changing from cast-to-cast because no community will ever be the same. That’s the beauty of it.”
-UW-Milwaukee Cast Member