Death Is Certain
Written and choreographed by Jack Ferver
Performed by Jack Ferver, Tony Orrico, and Liz Santoro
Original music composed and performed by John McGrew
Lighting by Kathy Kaufmann
Costumes by the performers
Premiered April 2009 at Danspace Project
“Everything changes. Everything dies. We can struggle, but we will lose.” In Death is Certain, Jack Ferver looks at the manipulative, savage, and desperate ways we try to resist the most certain thing. Ferver tests the limits of the performers’ bodies and emotional states with high octane choreography, physically rigorous tasks repeated to point of exhaustion, and brutally honest text. The performers hold nothing back in their frenetic attempts to negate their fears of mortality. Obsessions over sex, status, and security all provide interesting, but ultimately futile, distractions. A haunting original score created in collaboration with the work, by John McGrew of Apollo Run, accompanies the piece.
“Best dance of 2009”
- Artforum
“…Ferver tackles big subjects and he doesn’t pull his punches.”
- The New York Times
“The young performance artist’s surname brings to mind a quality of his work. To that add outrageousness, surprising subtlety, and huge ambition in subject matter.”
- The New Yorker
Death Is Certain is made possible, in part, with funds from the 2008-2009 Danspace Project Commissioning Initiative with support from the Jerome Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Bessie Schönberg/First Light Commissioning and Creative Residency Program at Dance Theater Workshop, which is supported by the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts - a federal agency, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Jerome Robbins Foundation. Dance Theater Workshop’s Studio Series is supported, in part, by Time Warner Inc.
Photographs: Michael Hart
