*Photos by Jason Starkie
HEATHER KRAVAS
RoCoCoCoCo
MAR 26 – 28 + APR 2 – 3 | 7:30 PM
APR 4 | 2 PM
12th Ave Arts Mainstage |1620 12th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122
Presented through Velocity’s Nationally Emerging Creative Incubator Program
RoCoCoCoCo — A Situation for Dancing in Four Movements
A note from the choreographer
Dear Future Audience,
There is no incorrect way to witness this work! You are welcome to come to any of the shows and as many as you would like. The first four performances (March 26th/27th/28th and April 2nd) are different from one another. For the last two performances, (April 3rd/4th) we are offering all of the 4 performances from the previous evenings, side-by-side, for a durational experience of the work. These last two events are structurally the same but offered at different times, on different days. So you see, one could come to see one short show, a couple of short shows, all of the short shows, or…a long show that offers everything that has come before. My hope is that you will feel free to come as you wish, as often as suits your curiosity. It is an experiment in time that I look forward to experiencing alongside you, as you desire.
xo, Heather
First Movement/Andante
MAR 26 | 7:30 PM | One Hour | Allie Hankins + Sylvia Schatz-Allison
Second Movement/Adagio
MAR 27 | 7:30 PM | One Hour| Carlin Kramer + Amanda Morgan with Bathsheba Marcus + Luke Raffanti
Third Movement/Allegro
MAR 28 | 7:30 PM | One Hour| Symone Sanz + Julia Sloane
The Finale & Coda
APR 2 | 7:30 PM | One Hour | The Cast
The Symphony (First Movement/ Andante, Second Movement/ Adagio, Third Movement/ Allegro, The Finale & Coda)
APR 3 | 7:30 PM | 4-1/2 hours with intermission and shared refreshments | The Cast
The Symphony (First Movement/ Andante, Second Movement/ Adagio, Third Movement/ Allegro, The Finale & Coda)
APR 4 | 2 PM | 4-1/2 hours with intermission and shared refreshments | 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. 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.
See the 4 Show Series
RoCoCoCoCo 4 Show Series
In this Series Subscription, audiences are invited to experience RoCoCoCoCo as a sequence of four unfolding events across several days, every night is different. Feel free to experience all five shows by subscribing to the 4 Show Series.
See the following:
- March 26, 7:30 PM · one hour | First Movement: Allegro Allie Hankins & Sylvia Schatz-Allison
- March 27, 7:30 PM · one hour | Second Movement: Adagio Carlin Kramer & Amanda Morgan
- March 28, 7:30 PM · one hour | Third Movement: Andante Symone Sanz & Julia Sloane
- April 2, 7:30 PM · one hour | Finale & Coda | The Cast
About the Work
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.
4 Show Series
Low Income | $60
General | $140
Champion | $220
ARTIST BIOS
HEATHER KRAVAS
REBECCA BROOKS
ALLIE HANKINS
AMANDA MORGAN
SYLVIA SCHATZ-ALLISON
LUKE RAFFANTI
MADELINE BEST
CARLIN KRAMER
SYMONE SANZ
JULIA SLOANE
BATHSHEBA MARCUS
NATIONALLY EMERGING CREATIVE INCUBATOR
Velocity’s Nationally Emerging Creative Incubator, Made in Seattle, provides support to Seattle-based artists through early ideation, development, premiere, and national tour of the work. In this program, Velocity provides a seed commissioning fund, and encourages artists to schedule the development of their work over a few years with both creative and technical residencies alongside setting a full development and touring strategy that includes building relationships with national presenters and applying to both local and national creation and tour funding. Artists in this incubator have made multiple evening length works and often have existing national relationships from past touring and presenting.
PROGRAM SUPPORT
Velocity’s 2026 season is supported by 4 Culture, the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, Artsfund, and Creative West. It is underwritten by John C. Robinson, the Glenn Kawasaki Foundation, in addition to generous support from our community donors.
Heather Kravas is a 2025 NDP Finalist Grant Award recipient. Support was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project with funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation in support of RoCoCoCoCo, laughing dances + goth cake conversation and to address continued sustainability needs.
John C. Robinson, Glenn H. Kawasaki Foundation
ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION
12th Ave Arts is fully accessible for wheelchairs and walkers. The lobby and bathrooms are at street level, and seating is available without the need for an elevator or stairs. The venue is also equipped with an Assistive Listening Device.
Heather Kravas
Since 1995, Heather Kravas has investigated choreographic, improvisation and collaborative practices in contemporary dance to explore the edges of performance.
Her work investigates:
lines
shapes
distances
presence
exertion
intersections
endurance
calamity
contradiction
concentration
tension
failure
sacrifice
labor
love
the cobbled together
+
words
Full of contradictions and emphatically non-spectacular, her dances invite audiences into the terrain of their own minds.
Kravas grew up in Pullman, WA, where she studied classical ballet and the experimental theater theories of Jerzy Grotowski. Significant to her understanding of dance as a vital form are the many artists/teachers/colleagues she has been privileged to work with: Rebecca Brooks, Cecilia Lisa Eliceche, Antonija Livingstone, DD Dorvillier, Dayna Hanson, Stephanie Skura, Marina Abramovic, Okkyung Lee, Yvonne Meier, Mary Overlie, Tere O’Connor, Dean Moss, Neil Greenberg, among many. A Guggenheim Fellow, Kravas has received support from Creative Capital, Doris Duke Impact, Foundation for Contemporary Art, MAP Fund, National Performance Network, Seattle Arts Commission, 4 Culture, f.u.s.e.d, and Performance Works NW. Her choreography has been presented at American Realness, Base, Chez Bushwick, The Chocolate Factory, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Fusebox Festival, The Kitchen, Movement Research, On the Boards, Performance Space New York, Tonic, Walker Art Center and Velocity Dance Center, as well as internationally.
*Photo by Jazzy Photo
Madeline Best is a Lighting Designer, Performer, and The Director of Operations at the Chocolate Factory Theater. Recent artists she has worked with include Brian Rogers, Michelle Ellsworth, Aki Sasamoto, Moriah Evans, Yve Laris Cohen, Anna Sperber, Neal Medlyn, 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 and currently lives in Long Island City, Queens.
*Photo by Paula Court
Rebecca has inhabited Heather’s world since 2006, as a performer (play, thing & others), performance advisor (a quartet, The Green Surround), and now, in RoCoCoCoCo, as somatic dramaturg or advisor, as you wish. Rebecca works somatically in support of the artists and the process, helping direct the emergence of the work, through and from the thinking sensing bodies. “No offense to anyone else I’ve ever worked with, but this is my favorite job.”
Her own performance works have been presented throughout NYC in all the un/usual places. As a performer she has worked with Marina Abramović, luciana achugar, Walter Dundervill, Maria Hassabi, Katy Pyle, Susan Rethorst, robbinschilds, Kathy Westwater and others. She has worked as performance advisor also with Milka Djordjevich. Rebecca has been on faculty at Bennington College, Balance Arts Center, and Movement Research, and she maintained a private Alexander Technique teaching practice from 2009-2019. MFA, Teaching Fellow, Bennington College; BA, Sarah Lawrence College; Co-creator, AUNTS; Co-curator, Movement Research Festival Fall 2014 and Spring 2007; Artistic Director, Rockbridge Artist Exchange. Rebecca is currently studying to become an Infant Developmental Movement Educator through the School for Body-Mind Centering. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and their two children.
Body Poet Sylvia Schatz-Allison is a sister, a devotee, a pleasure seeker, and a body currently studying dance at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle Washington. She has trained with and performed for Heather Kravas, Alia Swerskey, Lavinia Vago, Slowdanger, and many others. Sylvia’s main interests are in performance art, postmodern dance, and improvisational performance practices. She is inspired by the beauty of the grotesque, the female performance experience, human brutality, and violent instincts amongst many things.
NO GIRLS NO MASTERS | Emerging artistic duo No Girls No Masters is an experimental dance project made up of Kai Leigh Roach and Sylvia Schatz-Allison. The two have been collaborating in Seattle for the past two years. Through their found love for contact improvisation, durational performance, and risk-taking they discovered a deeply shared language that they use to explore their collaborative and individual works. They hurt, they exhaust, they surrender, they encourage audacity, and they promote grit.
*Photo by Pearl Schatz-Allison
Allie Hankins is a dancer, choreographer, and sound artist who has been producing and performing experimental works in Portland since 2013. She has self-produced eight original works and toured her productions to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Berlin, Minneapolis, Albuquerque, and Cork. In the Pacific Northwest, her works have been commissioned by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and On the Boards in Seattle. Allie’s interdisciplinary practice has led to her professional engagements with choreographers Milka Djordjevich (LA), Morgan Thorson (Minneapolis), Julien Previeux (Paris), and Ruairi Donovan (Cork); and Portland artists Linda Austin, Tahni Holt, Danielle Ross, Emma Lutz-Higgins, and claire barrera. In 2013, Allie co-initiated the ongoing Queer performance cooperative Physical Education (PE) with keyon gaskin, Takahiro Yamamoto, and Lu Yim. PE produces festivals, hosts reading groups, and teaches workshops nationally, promoting accessibility and critical engagement with performance in Portland and beyond. She’s been awarded residencies at Base, Centrum, Ucross, Headlands Center for the Arts, Caldera, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, and the Robert Rauschenberg Residency. Her work has been funded by The Regional Arts & Culture Council, the Oregon Arts Commission, the National Performance Network, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and she is a recipient of the 2025 Miller Foundation Spark Award for Performance.
Carlin Kramer is a Seattle-based dance artist, teacher, improviser, and performer whose work spans contemporary dance, improvisation, nightlife, and theatrical performance. After completing the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program in 2015, Carlin performed with YC2 for three seasons before joining Jody Kuehner’s (Cherdonna Shinatra) company DONNA in 2018. In 2019, she began teaching Dance Church® and co-founded the performance duo OVERKILL, which has since created and presented work at On the Boards, Kremwerk, XO Seattle, and other underground spaces. In 2023, Carlin performed in a three-hour durational piece with Emma Wheeler (OVERKILL), Lavinia Vago, and Heather Kravas, and in 2024 collaborated on FKK, a hypermedia immersive performance by Lavinia Vago at the Georgetown Steam Plant through Velocity’s Made in Seattle program. Carlin is currently developing her first full length-solo work, set to premier in 2026.
Amanda Morgan is from Tacoma, Washington. She joined Pacific Northwest Ballet as an apprentice in 2016 and was promoted to corps de ballet in 2017 and to soloist in 2022, making her the first black woman to do so in the company’s 50 year history.
In addition to her dance career, Amanda is a newly established choreographer, mentor and activist. She has choreographed for Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Next Step Program, premiering her works “Pages” (2018) and “The Argument” (2019). In 2019, She was selected to be a choreographer in the Seattle International Dance Festival, and won a residency at Northwest Film Forum and Velocity Dance Center, giving her the opportunity to create her own show at Northwest Film Forum. Later in 2019, she founded her collective “The Seattle Project”, which is a platform and a network of interdisciplinary artists collaborating to create new work and dance that is accessible to the community, and uplifts BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists. In February of 2020, she had her first show “The How of It Sped” premiere at Northwest Film Forum, and in July of 2020 she created and premiered her piece “Musings” for Seattle Dance Collective’s Continuum Program. In October of 2020, Morgan made her first piece for Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Digital Season, and also co-founded Pacific Northwest Ballet School’s Mentorship Program.
She was named “25 to Watch” in Dance Magazine for the 2021 year. She also has been featured on the National Endowment for the Arts podcast in February of 2021. Through her work within The Seattle Project, she has made more than 20 new dance works for the stage and screen, with the collaboration of her dance artists, co-director Zane Ellis, and filmmaker Henry Wurtz. Most recently, she has presented work at 12th Ave Arts, On the Boards, Wa Na Wari, and her upcoming new work ‘Arrivals’ at Seattle’s historic King St. Station in October.
Symone Sanz is a dance artist versed in performance, improvisation, and choreography based in Seattle. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has enjoyed creating work with Heather Kravas, The Seattle Project, Cherdonna Shinatra, and zoe|juniper, among many others. Symone inspires euphoria in her Dance Church® classes and supports the Seattle dance community through her work in arts administration.
Sylvia Schatz-Allison is a sister, a devotee, a pleasure seeker, and a body. When she was young, she danced with her mother, aunt, and grandmother, who trained her artistry and skill in Western Mass. Sylvia studied dance at Cornish College of the Arts 2021-2024 and found myself reborn through the patience and rigor gifted to her by mentors Heather Kravas, Lavinia Vago, Alia Swersky, Enzo Periera, Keyes Wiley, Kai Leigh Roach, Charlotte Boye-Christenson, Lola Mahaney, and so many more. Finding herself on the fringes of genre in life and art has necessitated her work in improvisation, poetry, durational performance, endurance work, and all sorts of extremes (the extremely beautiful, grotesque, painful, honest, violent, etc.).
Sylvia choreographed and performed my first professional piece titled ‘Third Degree Binge’ with Kai Leigh Roach as the duo ‘NO GIRLS NO MASTERS’ in February after graduating from Cornish in December 2024. As she grows into her career she is continuing her research through pain, nudity, trance, exhaustion, tenderness, fear, repetition, brutality, and furious hysterical movement.
I have Gretel, Ingrid, Pearl, and so many other women to thank for teaching, guiding, training, and giving me my life. This body is soft. This body is retched and grand.
Dominant, insignificant, she is silly, weak, open, and meaningless.
wet, gentle, eloquent, uncouth, exquisite, false, godly, barbaric, irresistible, simple, sunken.
My body is self. My body is all.
*Photo by Pearl Schatz-Allison
Originally from North Carolina, Julia Sloane is a multifaceted artist with a love for experimental performance. Sloane received a BFA in Dance from Cornish College of the Arts in 2015; since then, she has worked professionally with Dayna Hanson, Heather Kravas, Peggy Piacenza, Cherdonna Shinatra, and Kate Wallich, among other projects. Her own work has been presented in Northwest NextFest and Trigger: New Dance Happenings, as well as in multiple self-produced dance films. She is the Grants Specialist for Base, a nonprofit performance and residency space in Seattle, and is in the beginning stages of a new performance project with Dayna Hanson. Sloane currently resides in NYC, working as a freelance dance artist, producer, grant writer and Pilates instructor. www.julia-sloane.com
Since he moved to Seattle in 2017, demand for award-winning pianist Luke Raffanti has steadily grown. Besides his frequent performances as a solo recitalist, Luke loves collaborating with other musicians. He works with instrumentalists, but has particular depth of experience with classical vocalists, having worked with numerous opera and choral organizations as pianist and tenor. He also maintains a large private teaching studio and has served as collaborative pianist at Richmond Beach Church of Christ since 2021. Though he prefers to stay local, Luke has also performed across the United States and internationally in Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Canada. He grew up in New Zealand, Arizona, and Northern California, and graduated from Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music with dual degrees in classical piano performance and environmental studies.
Pianist Bathsheba Marcus has performed throughout the United States in chamber music and solo recitals. A versatile pianist Bathsheba is at home in a wide array of repertoire and is an ardent supporter of music of our time.
In addition to performing, Bathsheba is a dedicated educator and enjoys teaching students of all ages and levels. Bathsheba has maintained private studios in Brooklyn, NY, Durham, NC and currently in Redmond, WA. A strong believer that music study should be accessible to any one who wants to learn, Bathsheba has been an involved faculty member in several community music organizations including Bloomingdale School of Music in Manhattan, Williamsburg Movement and Arts Center in Brooklyn, and Cary School of Music in Cary, NC. She has also coached students in the Interschool Orchestras (NY, NY) and through the chamber music program at the Duke University String School (Durham, NC).
A graduate of LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts in NYC, Bathsheba holds a B.A. in Music from New York University and Master of Music and Doctoral of Musical Arts degrees from the State University of New York at Stony Brook where she studied with Gilbert Kalish.