Performance Space 122 Presents THE GREEN SURROUND

Choreographer and director Heather Kravas upends the effortful physicality of 9 women, their rehearsal of precision and practice of perfection in her latest work, The Green Surround. Utilizing the landscape of the ballet practice room and a vocabulary of linguistic degradation, it aims to hyper-extend and distort convictions of beauty. Compulsive loops and insistent unison underline a slip between understanding and seeing.

Individuality seeps through the cracks of the stoic mass, while a community is formed around the performers' shared efforts. The Green Surround recognizes the beauty of a body forced and forcing itself into an ideal, while considering the possibility that some necessary vitality exists in the pathetic failings to these standards. Insisting strength, while insinuating violence, it aims to be perfect and yet undermines perfectionism.

Performed by: Laurie Berg, Milka Djordjevich, Cecilia E., Carolyn Hall, Lyndsey Karr, Sarah Beth Percival, Liz Santoro, Antonietta Vicario, Elizabeth Ward

Choreography & Direction: Heather Kravas
Performance Advisor & Eye: Rebecca Brooks
Composer & Sound Design: Vorhees aka Dana Wachs
Scenography: Jason Starkie
Lighting Design: Madeline Best
Costume Constructor: Maria Garcia

Heather Kravas grew up in Pullman, WA where, under the tutelage of Deirdre Wilson, she studied classical
ballet and the experimental theater exercises of Jerzy Grotowski. An independent artist working, and working to work in New York City since 1998, she has performed for Marion Ballester, Jennifer Allen, Amy Cox, Yvonne Meier, and most significantly, DD Dorvillier, whose work she continues to tour. In Spring 2010 she was part of MoMA's retrospective, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. Her work has been presented at MR @ Judson Church, the Kitchen, DTW, Tonic, On the Boards, Kaaistudios (Brussels), City of Women (Ljubljana), Springdance (Moscow), Festival TransAmérique (Montréal), Festival Antipodes (Brest) and Chez Bushwick and awarded support from Washington State Arts Commission, Bossak-Heilbron Charitable Foundation, the Yard, f.u.s.e.d., and the CCN de Franche-Comté à Belfort. Heather lives and works between New York, Seattle, and Montesquieu-Volvestre, France.

Madeline Best (Light Design) designs dances, installations, lighting and video and is the Production Manager at the Chocolate Factory Theater. Best graduated from Bennington College, grew up in Durham NC and currently lives in Brooklyn NY. She has designed lights for Luciana Achugar's Bessie award winning PURO DESEO, Neal Nedlyn, Milka Djordjevich/Chris Peck and Len Jenkin. Performance experience includes work on The Chocolate Factory Theater's 2010 Resident Project Selective Memory (with Brian Rogers) as well as work with Choreographer Juliana May/MayDance.

Vorhees (Sound Design) is the nom de guerre of Dana Wachs, an audio engineer, musician, and sound designer, based in New York City. Vorhees began as a recording project in 2005, focusing on creating analogue textures and soundscapes for extended ambient listening sessions based on memories of childhood and teenage excursions to the Pine Barrens of South Jersey. Recordings, and now live performance, has evolved into more contemporary song structures while retaining her original ambient experiments, rejecting any assistance from a laptop. Ms. Wachs has applied her skill and artistry in music and audio production to world tours of Internationally acclaimed musicians such as Cat Power, MGMT, M.I.A., Lykke Li, and St. Vincent to
name but a few, as well as in Greene Street Recording Studios, (now defunct birthplace of classic albums by Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Sonic Youth, and New Order). She has also acted as a consultant for Visionaire Magazine's SOUND issue, sound design for NY Fashion Week designers Rachel Comey, Imitation of Christ, Y + Kei, Wink, Sebastian Pons and Jess Holzworth, and her composition "Condensor" featured in a short film by the SOMNUS collective for their 2008 F/W presentation. Vorhees continues to record and perform with recordings planned for release the summer of 2011.

Rebecca Brooks is a dance artist and Alexander Technique
teacher based in NYC. Recent performance work includes projects with Marina Abramovic, Amanda Loulaki, Jillian Pena, Katy Pyle, robbinschilds, and Kathy Westwater, and next month she will be performing in a work by Susan Rethorst at Danspace Project. Her own performance works have been presented throughout NYC. Rebecca has taught classes in the Alexander Technique at Balance Arts Center, CLASSCLASSCLASS, Movement Research, the Fieldston School and the American Dance Festival, and she also teaches privately. BA, Sarah Lawrence College; Co-founder, AUNTS; co-curator, Movement Research Festival Spring 2007: Reverence (Irreverence); Program and Event Manager, Movement Research; Artistic Director, Rockbridge Artist Exchange.

Jason Starkie, visual artist, studied painting in the late 80's in San Francisco at the Art Institute and has had studios in Chicago, Seattle, New York, Montreal and Leipzig. He is currently developing a new body of work in DUMBO.

This performance has received support from Swedish Hasbeens.

The Green Surround runs Wednesday, May 4 - Saturday, May 7 on the following schedule:
Wednesday -
Friday at 7:30PM, Saturday at 7:30 & 9:30PM

Tickets are $20, $15 (Student / Seniors), $11 with a PS122 Passport
Reserve online: http:// http://www.ps122.org/performances/the_green_surround.html
Reserve by phone: 212-352-3101
Reserve in person: Performance Space 122 is located at 150 1st Avenue at East 9th St.

Performance Space 122 is one of New York's ultimate destinations for cutting-edge theatre, dance, music, live art and multi-media. Now celebrating its 30th Anniversary Season, PS122 is dedicated to supporting and presenting artists who explore innovative form and provocative content, rigorously challenging the boundaries of contemporary performance. PS122 is committed to a steadfast search for pioneering artists from a diversity of cultures, nations and beliefs. www.ps122.org

Twitter: @PS122
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Performance-Space-122/109911652392000
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PerformanceSpace122

As part of The Festival of Ideas for the New City:
Rhythm and Repetition: Reconfiguring Performance Practice Across Genres
Working in dance and technologically-enabled comedic performance, Reggie Watts and Heather Kravas are hailed as multidisciplinary innovators in their respective spheres. RadioPlay, Watts's current collaboration with Tommy Smith, remixes historical radio dramas of yesteryear to produce a contemporary sonic hybrid. Kravas's The Green Surround emulates traditional balletic forms in an endeavor to transform them, offering a critical
commentary on the language of classicism. Rhythm and Repetition: Reconfiguring Performance Practice Across Genres brings together Watts and Kravas to discuss the intersections in their most recent work, and their respective methods for envisioning new models of practice.
Moderator TBA.
FREE: Saturday, May 7 at 4PM
Reserve online (ps122.org) or by phone (212-352-3101)

The Festival of Ideas for the New City, May 4-8, 2011, is a major new collaborative initiative in New York involving scores of Downtown organizations, from universities to arts institutions and community groups, working together to affect change. A first for New York, the Festival will harness the power of the creative community to
imagine the future city and explore the ideas destined to shape it. It will take place in multiple venues Downtown and is organized around three central programs: a three-day slate of symposia; an innovative StreetFest along the Bowery; and over eighty independent projects and public events. The Festival will serve as a platform for artists, writers, architects, engineers, designers, urban farmers, planners, and thought leaders to exchange ideas, propose solutions, and invite the public to participate. For more information, visit http://www.festivalofideasnyc.com.

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