visions of beauty


Heather Kravas is a choreographer and performing artist who investigates choreographic, improvisation and collaborative practices in contemporary dance to explore the limits of choreography.

Artist Bio

Punk in attitude, feminist in spirit and deliberately anti-spectacle, visions of beauty is a dance about itself and the compulsive, lopsided, angry, funny, frustrating and redemptive messiness of everything. Nine performers demonstrate how bodies both trap and free us. The work examines relationships between art, power, agency and desire; language is distilled, stuttered, repeated, held and abandoned, leaving space for the audience to experience something beyond amusement. Precise choreography gives way to visceral improvisation in a conversation between the emotional and the abstract. visions of beauty undermines theatrical conventions, calling to question the object of the dance, the labor of the performers and the judgement of its audience.

visions of beauty premiered in 2018 at Performance Space 122 in New York.


Discipline
Dance
Award Year
2016
Status

Completed


Heather Kravas presents “visions of beauty” at the 2016 Creative Capital Retreat

Heather Kravas

Heather Kravas

Seattle, WA

Heather Kravas is a choreographer and performing artist. Since 1995, she has investigated choreographic, improvisation and collaborative practices in contemporary dance to explore the limits of choreography as a form and her abilities as an artist. Combining recognizable traditions, tasks, and somatic exercises, her dances grapple with structural idealism and uncontainable emotions. In a renunciation of the spectacular, she strives to illuminate actions such as labor, listening, concentration, failure, and presence. Kravas grew up in Pullman, Washington, 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 relevant and complex form are the many artists/teachers/colleagues she has been privileged to work with/for: Antonija Livingstone, DD Dorvillier, Dayna Hanson, Stephanie Skura, Marina Abramović, Okkyung Lee, Yvonne Meier, among many. Her choreography has been presented at venues including American Realness, Base, Chez Bushwick, The Chocolate Factory, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project at St.Markʼs Church, Fusebox Festival, The Kitchen, Movement Research at Judson Church, On the Boards, Performance Space 122, Tonic, and Velocity Dance Center, as well as internationally. Heather currently lives in Seattle, Washington with her family.