Zahava comes from a professional dance background, training since the age of two with many masters at the Juilliard School, Tisch School of the Arts, Alvin Ailey School, Sarah Lawrence College and performing with such legends as Katherine Dunham, Urban Bush Women, Liz Lerman and the Joffrey Ballet. Her extensive training in West African, ballet, modern dance, Middle Eastern dance, Sufi Dancemeditation, and yoga has given her a sense of the infinite movement vocabulary of the body. She has also learned how differently each culture defines dance and its relationship to creating community, healing, connecting with the soul, finding lovers, rites of passage, and preparing for birth.
Zahava is a certified Pilates instructor, Anusara Yoga teacher for prenatal/postnatal and delivery, and worked with clients at East Physical Therapy to re-educate the nervous system and movement patterns. She had the honor of teaching birthing dances at Ina May Gaskin's Farm, known internationally for their women's centered birthing process. Zahava has studied the Chakra system with Anodea Judith, Feldenkrais with Barbara Forbes, the Sexual Shaman path with Kenneth Ray Stubbs, Ph.D., Conscious Activism with Seane Corn, ideokinesis with Andre Bernard, the art of intimacy with Sheri Winston, the pelvic floor with Virgina Reath, Marshal Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communication, and Re-Evaluation Counseling. She was one of the core educators at Deepak Chopra's Center in NYC where she co-facilitated two years of Sundays for Peace.
Zahava addresses both personal and collective transformation. She has been active in raising awareness around white privilege for the past nine years. She has been a resource trainer with the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond. She co-founded White Folks Soul, By Any Dance Necessary, a dance company exploring the incompatibility of wholeness and the race construct for white people. Her workshops have toured to national conferences on healing racism. Her choreography has toured the states in socially relevant performances. She has performed on BET, at the Kennedy Center, Joe's Pub, the Blue Note, Jacob's Pillow, Dance Place, in schools, gardens, and temples.
She's currently based in NYC offering classes, workshops, embodied ceremony, consultations and private sessions. Her clients include monks, Broadway dance captains, naturopathic doctors, yoga teachers, dance and theatre companies, activists, diversity trainers, shamans, sex workers, grandparents and courageous creative fun loving sexy souls!
This is my greatest gift, here...
photo by Jennifer Maeve