Walker Art Center presents
Heather Kravas + Victoria Haven
solid objects
solid objects/VOIDS
Friday + Saturday
May 13 + 14, 2022, 8:00 pm
McGuire Theater
Program length: 85 minutes
solid objects/SANDWICH
Thursday May 12, 5:00-9:00 pm
Saturday May 14, 1:00-5:00 pm
Cargill Lounge
Program length: 4 hours, come-and-go-as-you-wish
Concept and Co-direction
Heather Kravas + Victoria Haven
Performance
Aretha Aoki, Cecilia Lisa Eliceche, Chris Schlichting, Jennifer Kjos, Joey Kipp, José A. Luis, Judith Holo Shuî Xiān, opal ingle, Symone Sanz
Original Composition and Sound Installation
Zeena Parkins
Musicians
Jose Solares Jimenez, Mitch Stahlmann
Lighting Design
Madeline Best
Costumes
womxn’s rites
Choreography
Heather Kravas in collaboration with the performers
Visual Art
Victoria Haven
Design/Build
Dave Lipe
solid objects is co-commissioned by On the Boards and their Artist-in-Residence program. It was developed as part of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Residency program and the Robert Rauschenberg Residency program and further assisted by development grants and residencies from 4 Culture/Seattle, Oxbow Gallery/Seattle, The Ken and Judith Joy Family Foundation and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (Heather Kravas/2018)
A Note from Heather and Vic
solid objects: VOIDS and solid objects: SANDWICH have been 4+ years in the making. While it would surprise no one who knows either of us to hear that the work has taken root and hold, expanded, contracted and shape-shifted, we did not anticipate that it would also develop during a global pandemic and pivotal moment of racial reckoning within the United States. solid objects has been our way of paying attention. Paying attention to the people and things we care about and also drawing attention to that which is often overlooked. It has become a way to be together - with one another and then with more and more people, in differing, exquisite intimacies. We are deeply grateful to Philip Bither and the incredible team of people at Walker Art Center - (Julie! Pearl! Molly! Vance! Wyatt! Emmet! Aaron! John! Doc! Joel! Parker! Makenzie! Doug! Rosa! Jake! Emily! Katie! Ryan! ) for their deep commitment to seeing this project through in partnership with us - it has taken us several tries! Born from our long friendship and shared artistic compulsions, solid objects has been made over and over again by the ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE people you see and hear here and also some that have now moved on to other projects. Aretha, Cecilia, Chris, Jennifer, Joey, José, Jose, Judee, opal, Madeline, Mitch, Symone, Zeena and womxn’s rites, it is our complete honor to be in conversation with you all in this creation. Our endurance as artists exists in relationship through the support of our families and our loving friends throughout this l - o - n - g process and also, through many others: Dave and Jason and Gus and Valentina, you are everything <3 x’s the moon and back. Thank you Jenn and Kristen and Amanda for witnessing all the iterations and offering your words and friendship. Special thanks to those who traveled far and wide to be here with us! A guiding principal of solid objects is its responsiveness to what exists right now. All of the particulars that differentiate each stage, city, performer and audience leave their mark upon the material and the work reshapes itself to reverberate with these different folks and rooms. solid objects is perhaps willfully incomplete but it becomes itself only through your observation. We are so thankful for your presence.
Thank You
Renee Archibald, Ruth + Tony Lockwood, Marcus Crider, Dan Webb, Kristen Kosmas, Christian Axelsen, Jenn Joy, Amanda Hamp, Michelle Boulé, John Hoobyar, Talya Epstein, Jordan MacIntosh-Hougham, Zella Anderson, Zoe Scofield, Anna Fotheringham, Davora Lindner, Camilla Eckersley, Marlee Hopkins, Denny Jensen, Gus + Connie Kravas, Khristina Kravas + Carlos De Vincenzo, Laurel Canan, Sara Jinks, Dave Lipe, Jason + Gus + Valentina Starkie, Eirik Johnson, Hope Mohr, Ann Brady, Matt Hall, Carrell Courtright, Joshua Coe, Jackie Vitale, Ryan MacDonald + Frankie Aoki-MacDonald, Jean-Daniel Lafontant, Rachel Cook, Betsey Brock, Rich Bresnahan, Clare Hatlo, Brian Rogers, Fox Whitney, Vladimir Kremenovic, Dave Proscia, Dayna Hanson, Peggy Piacenza, Matt Sellars, Catharina Manchanda, Amanda Donnan, Arlo Van Liew, Ben Geffen, Shana Crawford, Lily Gold, Megan Morrissey, Morgan Thorson, Valerie Oliveiro, Leandro Nerefuh + Toya, Jeff Preiss, Diane Moua, Mercedes Bergman
All the performers right now:
Aretha, Cecilia, Jennifer, Joey, José A.L., Jose S.J., Judee, Madeline, Mitch, opal, Symone, Zeena
All the Walker people right now:
Philip, Julie, Pearl, Molly, Wyatt, Emmet, Doug, Rosa, Vance, Jake, Emily, Aaron, John, Doc, Joel, Parker, Makenzie, Jake, Katie, Ryan
Our other solid objects homes:
Oxbow, Velocity, The Robert Rauschenberg Residency, On the Boards, LMCC on Governors Island, Base
About the Artists
49° 16’ 57.72” N, 123° 7’ 14.52” W
ARETHA AOKI is a choreographer, dancer, and teacher originally from unceded Coast Salish territory (Vancouver, B.C.) and currently residing in the Wabanaki Confederacy on land belonging to the Abenaki, and Arosaguntacook Peoples (Maine). Together with artist Ryan MacDonald, she makes experimental, interdisciplinary, and hybrid performances that center themes of accumulation and emptiness, lineage-ancestry-authorship, and the body as a medium for space/time travel. Their newest work, IzumonookunI reimagines the female founder of kabuki as a punk/synthwave/goth glam figure. She had the honor of dancing in the Green Surround by Heather Kravas and has traversed the collaboration/performance spectrum with choreographers Juliette Mapp, Emily Johnson, Maura Donohue, robbinschilds, devynn emory, Daria Fain, Vanessa Anspaugh, Faye Driscoll, Kokoro Dance and others. She is beside herself with happiness to be a part of solid objects with all of these fine people. Aretha is Associate Professor of Dance at Bowdoin College. arethaoki.com
38° 41’ 55.5” S, 62° 13’ 04.0” W
CECILIA LISA ELICECHE (Wallmapu, 1986) is a dancer, choreographer, and campesina. They are traversed by more than 500 years of colonialism in Abya Yala and inspired by ancestral times outside of linearity. The territories she walks inhabit her. The culinary arts as well as rituals of death, birth, and life sustenance have become central to her work and life. She conceives choreography as craft and believes in the world making power of dance. She has worked with Janet Panetta, Etienne Guilloteau, Claire Croize, DD Dorvillier, Nadia Ellis and most especially with Heather Kravas. Some of her choreography includes “Unison”, “The Ghost of Lumumba”, Caribbean Thinkers for a New Europe” and “The Touching Sessions”. Since 2016, they have been sharing life and work with Brazilian artist Leandro Nerefuh and diving in the deep waters of Ayiti (https://haitioayiti.com/). In 2020, with the guidance of Ruro Caituiro, Cecilia gave birth to divine Toya. She’s a co-founding member of Dancing at the Crossroads (As We Walk). Cecilia is thankful to Houngan Jean-Daniel Lafontant, Egbomi Nancy de Souza, Weichafe Moira Ivana Millan and Dr.Kyrah Malika Daniels for their teachings and friendship.
43° 25’ 10.09” N, 83° 57’ 2.91” W
CHRIS SCHLICHTING is a choreographer and performer, whose ancestors include homesteaders who settled in Mnisota in the 1860s, advantaged by systems and structures built on violence, theft, and erasure against the Dakota people. Believing in a nimble and flexible definition of dance, they see choreography as a lens for examining context and possibility, including work to uncover our own responsibility and accountability to our overwhelmingly complex and troubling history, present, and future. Schlichting’s choreography has been presented at spaces throughout Mnisota and Turtle Island, the land commonly referred to as the United States. Schlichting shared work alongside Heather Kravas, (and Daria Fain) in an evening curated by Tere O’Connor in 2009 at Danspace Project (land of the Lenape, NYC); he is grateful and proud to be working in connection with her, Vic, and this inspiring group of artists on this project.
42° 16’ 50.88" N, 83° 44’ 34.8” W
Since 1995 HEATHER 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 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. Significant to her understanding of dance as a relevant form are the many artists and teachers she has been privileged to study with and/or work beside. Some of these people may not even remember her but their work lives on in Kravas’s body and body of work: Marina Abramavic, Marion Ballester, DD Dorvillier, Neil Greenberg, Dayna Hanson, Victoria Haven, Okkyung Lee, Nina Martin, Antonija Livingstone, Yvonne Meier, Dean Moss, Tere O'Connor, Mary Overlie, Janet Sassoon, Joan Skinner, Stephanie Skura, Deirdre Wilson and Hannah Wiley.
Heather lives with her partner and two children in Seattle, on the un-ceded, ancestral lands of the Coast Salish people, specifically, the Duwamish People.
25° 41’ 7.08” N, 80° 20’ 19.32” W
JENNIFER KJOS hails from sunny South Florida and has lived in New York for many years. The city, the mountains, a town, and now again in the borough of Brooklyn. Jennifer has enjoyed a wild, delightful, durational career working with artists such as luciana achugar, Walter Dundervill, and the esteemed Heather Kravas for lengthy periods of time over several projects and has also worked with chamecki/lerner doing live performance and film. She cut her teeth in the downtown scene dancing and studying with RoseAnne Spradlin and is grateful for that early influence. Last summer she joined MGM (modern garage movement) on their 2021 California tour and had a total blast. Jennifer's current interests include loss, the end of life, visibility, rocking, the unmanifest, and the massive gulf between the horizontal and the vertical. Special thanks to St. James, the hybrids, and Kay. And thank you the most to Heather, Victoria, and the lovely cast and crew for this indelible experience. jenniferkjos@gmail.com
12° 58’ 39.72” S, 38° 30’ 5.76” W
JOEY KIPP (he/him/his) born in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil adopted and raised in Mtn. View, CA. Joey attended Marymount Manhattan College (B.A. in Biology and Dance). He trained at the Cunningham School on scholarship. Joey is honored and thrilled to be spending his 6th year working/collaborating with Heather Kravas & 3rd year with Vic Haven. Joey has performed with niv Acosta, Stacy Grossfield, luciana achugar, miguel gutierrez, Ani Taj, Biba Bell, David Byrne in Social and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company’s Deep Blue Sea (both at the Park Ave. Armory), and The Van Gogh Experience choreographed by Chelsea Arce in NYC. THEATER: Damn Yankees (The Rev), The Miracle of Heliane (Summerscape at Bard), Newsies (CMTSJ), The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (The Progressive Theater), Head Over Heels, In The Heights (Lincoln Park Center for Performing Arts). Joey is a collaborator with Pioneers Go East and Cynthia Madansky in which they are creating pieces based on the work of James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry. Thank you to On The Boards and The Rauschenberg Residency for their support of solid objects. Joey would also like to honor the incredible artists/contributors in all iterations of solid objects, the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho, the Snake River, the Floyd Family, all the BIPOC & LGBTQAI+, & women who have sacrificed/fallen/suffered/suffer due to colonialism and white supremacy, the Flatbush Community, Betsy, Vic, Heather, his mom, & sister.
17° 59’ 38.04” N, 94° 32’ 47.76” W
JOSÉ A. LUIS was born in Veracruz, Mexico and raised in Racine, Wisconsin. Considered a “late-dancer” he began his formal training at UW-Milwaukee, graduating with a BFA in dance. He performed and created works locally before moving to dance professionally in Chicago. Collaborative, undergraduate, and post-undergraduate pieces led to festivals, residencies, as well as progress showings during this time. Now in Minneapolis, he hones his introspective, honest approach to dance making as an independent solo choreographer. The artistic and personal growth across borders formed a nine year dream to self-produce an evening length show. In September of 2021 this dream became reality by honoring the people who have shaped his voice. Challenged by dancing for artists again (after a seven year hiatus) and teaching, José approaches movement in 2022 with the intent to accept, challenge, and learn as we are, human. For more: www.jose.dance.
31° 51’ 27.36” N, 116° 36’ 19.44” W
JOSE FERNANDO SOLARES (saxophone/flute) is a Mexican improviser, saxophonist, composer and sound artist, born in Ensenada, Baja California. Jose has a BA in Classical Saxophone Performance from the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC). Although his academic formation was in classical music, Jose has developed his musicianship in many other music genres like ska, rock, reggae, jazz, contemporary music, free improvisation, among others.
He has performed in many orchestras and ensembles such as UABC Symphony, UABC Chamber Orchestra, La Covacha Big Band, Wilfrido Terrazas Sea Quintet, Bucefalo, Burnt Sugar Arkestra Chamber, etc. Jose has also participated in many festivals as Vértice 2018, Ensenada’s New Music Festival (Neofonia FMNE) 2019/2021, International Improv’s Week (SIDIMPRO) 2013- 2019, La Covacha’s International Jazz Week ( SIJAZZ) 2014-2019, Festival Of New Trumpet Music West 2020 (FONT West),and the Afrofuturism Festival at Carnegie Hall 2022.
Jose has had the opportunity to work and learn from amazing artists like, Stephanie Richards, Tomeka Reid, Wilfrido Terrazas, Nathan Hubbard and Ivan Trujillo. With more than twenty world premiere pieces performed, one of his greatest interests in music is to explore the sonic possibilities through new music and free improvisation. Jose is nowadays studying an MFA in Performance and Literature, with an emphasis in Improvisation at Mills College, in Oakland CA.
45° 1’ 55.92” N , 93° 20” 18.96” W
J H SHUǏ XIĀN is an interdisciplinary choreographer, improviser, and sound artist whose work is interested in engaging with the deconstruction and parody of dominant culture narratives and conventional performance expectations, and standing in allyship to communities going through persecution and discrimination in the days we are living in. She has presented works at venues including Fresh Oysters Performance Research (R.I.P.), Public Functionary, Bryant Lake Bowl, Tek Box, The Southern Theater, Intermedia Arts (R.I.P.), Frey Theatre (Twin Cities, MN) and 9 Herkimer Place (Brooklyn, NY). She has recently enjoyed performing for/collaborating with others including Dua Saleh, Valerie Oliviero, Leila Awadallah, Judith Howard, Rosy Simas, Sophiaaaahjkl;8901, Shayna Allen, Pramila Vasudevan, Megan Mayer, Emily Gastineau, and Erin Drummond. She is a 2017 Q-Stage: New Works and 2019 Momentum: New Dance Works recipient, and currently works with the Lightning Rod Arts Organism as a teaching artist and ensemble member. She is currently working on a piece to be premiered as part of Red Eye’s New Works 4 Weeks festival from May 26th-28th.
40° 46’ 59.16” N, 73° 58’16.32” W
MADELINE BEST is a Lighting Designer, Performer, Mother, and The Director of Operations at the Chocolate Factory Theater. Madeline’s design practice comes from an interest in the way light affects a space and the way the light feels as an audience member or performer. Her lighting design subtitly supports the work of collaborative artists. Recent projects have included the following artists Katy Pyle/Ballez, Heather Kravas, Ursula Eagly, Milka Djordjevich, Efrian Rozas, luciana achugar, Andrea Kleine, Anne-B Parson/Big Dance Theater, and more. Madeline grew up in Durham, North Carolina studied at Bennington College and currently lives in Long Island City, Queens.
45° 0’ 49.32” N, 93° 19’ 19.92” W
MITCH STAHLMANN (flute) is a Minneapolis-born and Oakland-based multimedia artist, improvisor and composer focusing on flutes and electronics. His work has been presented in collaboration with and alongside Kronos Quartet, Meredith Monk, Zeena Parkins, Briana Marela, and Bang on a Can. His personal practice is dedicated to revealing the unearthed tones and uncharacteristic behaviors of the flute. An archive can be heard of this work through the recently premiered solo album Into the Wish, released through Mondoj of Warsaw, Poland. Mitch actively works with fellow bandmates Lynn Avery and Cole Pulice in LCM (Orange Milk Records) as well as various other improvisatory and impulsive acts of sound across the globe. Mitch completed his MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media with a Elizabeth B. Mills award for Composition at Mills College in 2020.
www.mitch.digital
39° 3’ 6.73” N, 95° 41’ 47.38” W
OPAL is an artist based in New York City/Lenapehoking and the woods of the western Catskills/on the homelands of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Some of their current creative practices involve communing with trees, cultivating flowers and writing queer speculative fiction. As a performer, they have collaborated with choreographers Hilary Easton, Neil Greenberg, Heather Kravas and Tere O’Connor, among others.
34° 4’ 31.30” N, 118° 22’ 48.47” W
SYMONE SANZ holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an experienced artist in performance, improvisation, and choreography. Amidst the pandemic, she has enjoyed creating live works with artists Vladimir Kremenović, zoe|juniper, and Heather Kravas, among many others. Symone also enjoys filming, editing, and producing dance in her spare time.
47° 36’ 34.2'' N, 122° 19’ 40.08’' W
VICTORIA HAVEN is a Seattle-based artist whose practice revolves around drawing, but is rarely confined to lines across a single plane. Whether exploring the corridors of real or imagined spaces or intervening directly with existing architectures, Haven’s place-based work draws on lived experience and reveals surprising connections between the people, histories, materials and structures that inhabit these worlds. In the past decade, she has created bodies of work that were born in exploration of South London, Los Angeles, her Seattle studio environs, and a Shaker village in Western Massachusetts. The resulting work has been exhibited in a wide variety of exhibitions including Line at Lisson Gallery London, Overland at Planthouse Gallery NY, Subtitles at Portland Art Museum and Proposed Land Use Action at Seattle Art Museum.
Awards include Pollock-Krasner Fellowships, Art Matters, Betty Bowen Award/Seattle Art Museum and a New Foundation fellowship. Past residencies include MacDowell Colony, Jentel Wyoming, Mass Moca and Yucca Valley Materials Lab. She is especially grateful to On the Boards, Oxbow; Seattle and Rauschenberg Residency; Florida for providing focused time over the past 4 years and supporting the collective energy critical to the unfolding of our solid objects vision.
Vic is profoundly honored to have spent this invaluable time engaged in collaboration with Heather Kravas and the phenomenal group of performers, artists and writers who have helped shape this special project.
47° 36’ 22.32“ N, 122° 19’ 55.56” W
WOMXN'S RITES was established in 2016 as a socially responsible business producing lounge wear. A portion of all sales have been donated to nonprofits working for womxn’s rights but that model is based on flawed governance. We are creating a more complex approach to design and making a living, one that is rooted in collectivized labor. the relaunch of womxn’s rites is a collaborative venture, in partnership with artists to create garments and sculptures for performance and critical engagement. By exploring alternative forms of exchange we are producing clothing as a text to better understand our world.
42° 19’ 53.04” N, 83° 2’ 44.88 W
Electro-acoustic composer/performer, multi-instrumentalist, improviser, and pioneer of contemporary harp performance, ZEENA PARKINS re-imagines both the acoustic harp and an evolution of her original electric ones, through the use of expanded playing techniques, preparations, and custom designed processing. Within a shifting constellation of improvised/composed/gesture/touch/ space/sound/noise/music, Parkins is engaged in translations of sonicity within environments: architectural/emotional/topographical/social.
Awards include: Doris Duke Artist Award, DAAD Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MAP Fund grants, NYFA Fellowship, Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist-in-Residence, Herb Alpert/Ucross Prize, Civitella Ranieri Residency, the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, and three Bessies for her groundbreaking work with dance.
Parkins has received commissions from Whitney Museum, Tate Modern, Sharjah Art Foundation, NeXtWorks Ensemble, Either/Or Ensemble/Ensemble Son, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Sudwestrundfunk, Bang on a Can Spit Orchestra, and Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Parkins has performed and/or recorded with: Bjork, Ikue Mori, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Laetitia Sonami, Christian Marclay, James Fei, Butch Morris, Elliott Sharp, William Winant, Brian Chase, Nate Wooley, Nels Cline, Yuka C. Honda, Tony Buck, Magda Mayas, Mette Rassmussen, Steve Beresford, Barry Guy, Cyro Baptista, Okkyung Lee, Matmos, Yoko Ono, Yasunao Tone, Pauline Oliveros, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Myra Melford, Miya Masaoka, George Lewis, Joan La Barbara, David Behrman, Jeff Kolar, and Green Dome with Ryan Sawyer and Ryan Ross Smith.
Parkins has recently been awarded an honorary doctorate from Bard College. Currently, she is the Darius Milhaud Professor of composition at Mills College.
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