Heather Kravas's OVERLY MERRY Announced At The Chocolate Factory Theater

The Chocolate Factory Theater continues its Spring 2024 season with the premiere of overly merry, a new dance performance by Heather Kravas. Tickets may be purchased in advance at chocolatefactorytheater.org.

Composed of six discrete dances - or episodes - which unfold and accumulate in unpredictable constellations over the course of 2+ hours, overly merry is a thinly veiled gift to Mary Overlie*, posing the question: “is this what you meant?”

overly merry is neither a response to Overlie's pedagogy, nor an homage to the woman herself; rather, Overlie's work becomes a springboard for a new kind of collective research and inquiry; a dance-based, post-happening “happening” comprising patterns, surprises, and accidents, informed by Gertrude Stein's quote: “there is no such thing as repetition”.

“Mary Overlie laughed at Heather Kravas while Heather Kravas struggled one day. She said, Oh Heather, everything with you is about time! And Heather took that blessing/admonishment/encouragement/curse as the push into the time-dance muck she was looking for.”

Dancers walk, then run, staging intricate and precarious trios with The Chocolate Factory's peculiar architecture. Long, landscape-inspired stillnesses glacially unfold. Letter-shaped cookies are served to the audience. Many, many verbs are recited from long paper scrolls; an incantation. And of course, “pure movement”: dancers push, slither, traverse, recite, slide, press, repeat, listen, chart, leave, return, disappear, clatter, bumble, pull, eat, embrace, quiver, fail, persist, love**. 

overly merry is an experiment in being together, with differences; in doing something so much that the tragedy becomes comedy, then tragedy again. It is a dance within a dance within a dance where the rugs get pulled out from under one thing and then another, again and again, until we cannot help but ask: “is this what we mean?”

overly merry is a dance by Heather Kravas made with Aretha Aoki and Cecilia Eliceche, illuminated by designer Madeline Best and enhanced by dance advisor Rebecca Brooks. Special guests include TILT Brass, Lola Mahaney, Symone Sanz, and Jennifer Kjos, plus secret undercover dance agents.

*Mary Overlie (January 15, 1946 – June 5, 2020) was an American choreographer, dancer, theater artist, professor, author, and the originator of the Six Viewpoints technique for theater and dance. According to her own biography, she was “not afraid of obscurity”.

The Chocolate Factory Theater last supported Kravas's work in 2016, with the premiere of play, thing.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Heather Kravas grew up in Pullman, Washington, homeland of the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) Tribe and Palus people, where she studied ballet and the experimental theories of Grotowski. Since 1995, Kravas has investigated choreographic, improvisation and collaborative practices in contemporary dance to explore the limits of choreography and her artistic abilities. Punk, feminist, precise and extreme, her work is continually built, wrecked and reconstructed to activate curiosity and examine relationships between art, power, agency and desire. Kravas has received support from numerous organizations such as The Guggenheim Foundation and her choreography has been presented at venues including American Realness, Fusebox Festival and Performance Space New York as well as internationally in Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Russia and Slovenia.

ABOUT THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY THEATER

The Chocolate Factory Theater is an artist-centered organization, built by and for artists.  Co-founders Sheila Lewandowski and Brian Rogers began making work together in 1995 and quickly saw the need for a creative home to support their work and the work of fellow experimental performance-based artists.  The Chocolate Factory therefore has grown and developed within and through a creative process that centers the development of new work, as guided by makers.

The Chocolate Factory Theater exists to encourage and support performing artists in their process of inquiry. We engage with a community of artists who challenge themselves and, in doing so, challenge us. We believe that by supporting the labor of artists and the public presentation of their work, we contribute to elevating New York City as a thriving and more equitable wellspring of ideas.

The Chocolate Factory embraces artistic practice as an integral part of the artist's whole life, an essential component of the life of our community and a key element of a larger national and international artistic dialogue. As such, we host artists as our equal partners with shared autonomy, trust and appreciation.

Since its founding in 2004, The Chocolate Factory Theater has supported the development and presentation of new work by a community of local, national and International Artists working in dance, theater, performance, and related practices. 

The Chocolate Factory Theater continues its pioneering commitment to addressing labor conditions within the independent performing arts community by paying all lead artists, performers, designers and technicians a fair hourly wage, on the books, for all rehearsal and production hours within our spaces.

An extensive archive of The Chocolate Factory's past performances is freely available at vimeo.com/chocolatefactory.

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