Review: 3G Art Collective-A Devotional Evening of Dance, Memory, & Legacy

What does it mean to inherit a legacy of survival? Shany Dagan, John Reed, and Jana Krumholtz, all grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, unveiled three vulnerable and interdisciplinary dance works that explore the answer to that question.

Presented by The 3rd Gen Project, the evening featured excerpts from SHEVA, The Only Ones, and 6 Million Jews Didn’t Die For You To…, each rooted in personal history and examining the weight of generational trauma alongside the will to transform it. As the first in what will become an annual initiative honoring survivor stories through performance, this debut offered a moving testament to resilience, memory, and the healing power of art.

SHEVA
Director-Choreographer: Shany Dagan
Performer: Yochai Greenfeld
Original Music: Luke Wygodny

Opening the evening was an excerpt from SHEVA, a haunting and poetic solo choreographed by Israeli-American artist Shany Dagan and performed with aching intensity by Yochai Greenfeld.  Inspired by the survival story of Zvi Harry Likworni, who at the young age of 7 was forced to mature during the Holocaust, SHEVA balances multimedia, props, and finely tuned movement to tell a deeply personal story. 

Photo Credit: Andrew Mauney @AJMPhotoNYC 

SHEVA opens with three clotheslines holding slips of paper with words—some hopeful (“childhood”), others heavy (“hunger,” “death march”) and below the clothesline - a singular black rope. Yochai Greenfeld’s performance was a masterclass in emotional precision: a rope became a jump rope of joy, then a belt of hunger, then shackles of loss. Lighting shifts mirrored the journey, from the green glow of “liberation” to the stark spotlight on Greenfeld as he writhed, weighed down by the words that were now pinned and covering his body, symbolizing the heaviness of his past experiences. In a final image, both beautiful and devastating, he held “gratitude” close as he reached for “childhood,” and let it slide above him and away, signaling the innocence stolen from him. 

Photo Credit: Andrew Mauney @AJMPhotoNYC 

Dagan’s choreographic voice is evocative and raw. Her movement is rooted in intention, which creates a deep sense of empathy toward the soloist’s struggle. Her choreography emotes with great precision the universal feelings of fear, flares of resistance, and finally, an exhale of resilience.

The Only Ones
 Creator/Choreographer/Performer: John Reed
Performers: Taylor Gordon, Trevor Cook

The second work, The Only Ones, wove spoken monologue with dance, with John Reed’s warm, reflective narration floating over the onstage duet between Taylor Gordon and Trevor Cook.  Reed's work grapples with loneliness, and the importance of lineage and honoring the resiliency of our ancestors. 

Photo Credit: Andrew Mauney @AJMPhotoNYC 

Reed spoke of his grandparents, Holocaust survivors and the sole surviving members of their families, who met in a displaced persons camp. Onstage, Gordon and Cook embodied the imagined memory of that meeting. Slow, cautious, but graceful movement at an initial first meeting in the camp transitioned to a scene bathed in light reminiscent of sunrise over an open field.  Now as they fall in love, they dance with fluid synchronicity: soft leaps, sweeping turns, and moments of playfulness reminiscent of young love juxtaposed with stillness where their embrace said more than words. Reed’s narration framed their love story as a reclamation: “This is where their life begins again.”

Photo Credit: Andrew Mauney @AJMPhotoNYC 

As the story turned to loss, Reed honored his grandparents as “divine” for all they endured. The work closed with a poignant transformation where Reed steps into the dance himself, first a slow dance with his “grandmother,” then joined by both grandparents as they leapt and twirled in unison. It was a gentle but powerful embodiment of legacy: their stories continue through him.

Reed gracefully balances heartfelt story telling and comedic self realization through a blend of ethereal movement and vulnerable spoken word.  It feels as though he’s invited us into his mind and we are getting a small peek into his memory, his hopes, and his dreams. 

6 Million Jews Didn’t Die For You To…
 Writer, Director, Choreographer, Performer: Jana Krumholtz
Sound Editing: Dan Castiglione

The evening closed with an excerpt from Jana Krumholtz’s one woman show, first seen at the LA Fringe Festival, titled 6 Million Jews Didn’t Die For You To… . Melding humor, candor, and raw truth, Krumholtz framed her story around a family kitchen table and the intergenerational weight of survival. Her grandparents, Holocaust survivors, were the first to marry in the U.S. after the war. When she confessed her dream of dancing in New York, her grandmother’s response was swift: “Six million Jews did not die for you to become a dancer.” 

 Photo Credit: Andrew Mauney @AJMPhotoNYC 

Through movement, Krumholtz unpacked that defining moment in her youth. Theater jazz dance sequences winked at her A Chorus Line’s Broadway dreams; raw, grounded contemporary phrases sifted through the ache of inherited trauma; rose petals marked a bittersweet stage of realization and release. Dancing through her emotions, she realizes she has an opportunity to break the cycle of generational trauma. Whereas her grandparents were forced to hide who they were, she has a chance to boldly and unapologetically be herself. 

Photo Credit: Andrew Mauney @AJMPhotoNYC 

After giving a nod to the dance of her culture, the Hora, earlier in her piece, she brings us back to it at the end as an act of reclamation. Krumholtz invites the audience members to join her in the dance, turning the theater into a communal circle of celebration of culture and dance. The invitation was more than participatory, it was a statement: it’s possible to honor her family’s legacy while building her own.

Krumholtz’s storytelling through movement shows us that dance movement is healing. Through movement she finds her voice, her authenticity, and her bravery to be herself.  Most importantly, Krumholtz leverages dance to build community and create joy.

More than an evening of dance, the 3G Art Collective presented a living archive: personal histories told through the universal language of movement. It reminded us that art can carry memory forward, not as a static relic, but as something alive, evolving, and shared.

The performance ran at Arts on Site on August 7th. For more information and to learn about future performances from The 3rd Gen Project, visit & follow on Instagram at @3rdgen.project.

Lead Photo Credit: Andrew Mauney @AJMPhotoNYC