Made in USA | a quartet

Ballet, traditional Greek dances, majorette moves and movements from labour demonstrations: in “a quartet”, four outstanding dancers with different styles draw their inspiration from unrelated sources and perform four solos which unfold simultaneously. The common thread running through all four is the word ‘want’, which is repeated at the start of the piece and haunts it through to the end.

Through a choreography rooted on a precision of movement which must have taken countless hours of rehearsal to master, Heather Kravas, a choreographer with Greek roots, experiments with its elements through the whole, highlighting the moments of unanimity, points of tension, and clashes that reveal fragmentation. She studies how the repetition of motifs through the imposition of unity can reveal difference.

Ultimately, can the individual units with their divergent goals form a group? How do exception and conflict work? Where does ‘we’ end and ‘they’ begin? This performance puts our socially accepted norms and beliefs under the microscope, and the production’s minimalist lens reveals conventions of every sort. How far can our ‘wants’ extend when others’ ‘wants’ begin?