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Heather Kravas

Comprised of a kaleidoscopic ballet, a mutating folk dance and a titillating cheer, the quartet examines the politics of societal fidelity. Where is the end of us and the beginning of them? How do we come close from far away? Subsumed by arduous tasks, the performers here are creators of distorted traditions. Individuals interrelating, they are bodies becoming a body.

the quartet is a cult, an essence, a machine, a snowflake, a Utopia and a quotation mark.

Heather Kravas is a choreographer and performer based in Seattle, NYC and Montesquieu-Volvestre (France). During her time in this city she co-founded the d9 dance collective and worked alongside artists Maureen Whiting, Amii LeGendre, Karn Junkinsmith and Jack Magai. Her work has been presented nationally by P.S.122, the Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research and Danspace Project as well as internationally. As a performer, she works with DD Dorviller's human future dance corps and was recently a re-performer in MoMA’s retrospective, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present.

About the Artist

Heather Kravas

Heather Kravas

Photo courtesy of the artist

Since 1995, Heather Kravas has investigated choreographic, improvisation and collaborative practices in contemporary dance to explore the edges of performance. Her work investigates: lines shapes distances presence exertion intersections endurance calamity contradiction concentration tension failure sacrifice labor love the cobbled together + words Precise and extreme, these dances look like landscapes punctuated by Rube Goldberg machines. Glacial movements give way to strange loops, still forms tremble and transform, DIY folk dances turn into complicated parables. Full of contradictions and emphatically non-spectacular, they invite audiences into the terrain of their own minds. Kravas grew up in Pullman, WA where, under the tutelage of Deirdre Wilson, she studied classical ballet and the experimental theater theories of Jerzy Grotowski. Significant to her understanding of dance as a vital and complex form are the many artists/teachers/colleagues/collaborators she has been privileged to work with/for: Antonija Livingstone, DD Dorvillier, Dayna Hanson, Stephanie Skura, Marina Abramovic, Okkyung Lee, Yvonne Meier, Mary Overlie, Tere O’Connor, Dean Moss, Neil Greenberg, Cecilia Lisa Eliceche, Rebecca Brooks, among many. A Guggenheim Fellow, Kravas has also received support from Creative Capital, the Doris Duke Impact Award, Foundation for Contemporary Art, MAP Fund, National Performance Network, New England Foundation for the Arts, Seattle Arts Commission, 4 Culture, f.u.s.e.d, Bossack-Heilbron, the Yard, Pact-Zollverein and Performance Works Northwest. Her choreography has been presented at venues including American Realness, Base, Chez Bushwick, The Chocolate Factory, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project @ St.Markʼs, Fusebox Festival, The Kitchen, LMCC, Movement Research, On the Boards, Performance Space New York, Tonic and Velocity Dance Center as well as internationally. Heather currently lives in Seattle, Washington with her partner and 2 kids.

@heatherkravas

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Co-commissioned by On the Boards, Fusebox Festival, Performance Space 122 and the National Performance Network. the quartet was supported through On the Boards' Performance Production Program.