Heather Kravas: RoCoCoCoCo

RoCoCoCoCo — A Situation for Dancing, in Four Movements

I. March 26, 7:30 PM · one hour | First Movement: Allegro Symone Sanz & Julia Sloane
II. March 27, 7:30 PM · one hour | Second Movement: Adagio Carlin Kramer & Amanda Morgan
III. March 28, 7:30 PM · one hour | Third Movement: Andante Allie Hankins & Sylvia Schatz-Allison
IV. April 2, 7:30 PM · one hour | Finale & Coda | The Cast
V. April 3, 7:30 PM · four and a half hours (with intermission and shared refreshments) | The Symphony | The Cast
VI. April 4, 2 PM · four and a half hours (with intermission and shared refreshments) | The Symphony | The Cast

Since 1995, Heather Kravas has investigated choreographic, somatic, and collaborative practices in contemporary dance to explore the edges of performance. For Made in Seattle, she offers RoCoCoCoCo—an evolving cycle of four dances, shared across four evenings and culminating in two full-length presentations of the complete work.

Imagined as a DIY folk dance that turns into a snowflake, fractals into a vortex, veers into a grocery list, emanates like an aura, aligns like a pinball machine, and collaborates like an ant colony, RoCoCoCoCo slips beyond classification.

Instead, it proposes a new structure for performance—one that holds dancers and audiences alike in states of heightened attention, curiosity, and desire. Guided by the somatic dramaturgy of longtime collaborator Rebecca Brooks, RoCoCoCoCo is created for Allie Hankins, Carlin Kramer, Amanda Morgan, Symone Sanz, Sylvia Schatz-Allison, and Julia Sloane. The work traces the layered effort of dancing together—energetic, rhythmic, precise, and tender. It invites us to sense how intimacy scales, how perception expands, and how dancing itself becomes a site for both clarity and complexity—a space of shared and essential presence.

RoCoCoCoCo takes place in the black box of 12th Avenue Arts, with spectators seated on three sides of the stage. The dancers share the space with two pianists performing Terry Riley’s Keyboard Study No. 1 on upright pianos bound back-to-back. The live sounds of the theater—breath, footsteps, resonance—are at times amplified, at times overtaken by electric music. Lighting, designed by longtime collaborator Madeline Best, shifts, echoing the slow transformations of daylight in nature.

Audiences are invited to experience RoCoCoCoCo in many ways: as singular performances that stand on their own; as a sequence unfolding across several days; or as the complete work, gathered in the final two evenings.