Choreographed and Performed by Jack Ferver
With Liz Santoro
Film and Photography by Jason Akira Somma

Breakout choreographer Jack Ferver returns after last year’s sold-out engagement at the New Museum to premiere a darkly satirical new work about the relationship between shallow ambition and fame. As dancers explore themes of self-exploitation and cavort for attention, spectators enable the spectacle and, through their attendance, validate the thesis. This work critically engages the tricky issue of culpability in a viewer’s gaze and the inescapable self-mythologies that emerge when calling oneself an artist (i.e., the performance of identity). Ferver approaches these concerns head-on and without shame, challenging you to watch and daring you to look away.

Jack Ferver's work has been called by The New York Times, "…restless, visceral, and often painful... sympathetic as it is bitingly corrosive".  Ferver was the first choreographer to be presented at The New Museum with I Am Trying to Hear Myself in 2008. He recently remounted the work this summer at PS 122. This past year he also premiered his evening length dance/theatre work Death is Certain to sold out audiences at Danspace Project.  Death is Certain was workshoped in January of 2009, through the Dance Theater Workshop space grant, Studio Series.  Ferver was also an artist in residence from 2008-2009 at Chez Bushwick, inaugurating their new series CAKE!   In 2008 Ferver premiered MEAT: A Diptych, his second Mondo Cané! commission from Dixon Place.  Other performances shown at Dixon Place were Ferver’s first full length work When We Were Young And Filled With Fear (a Mondo Cané! commission) and Eshge Khoda va Sheitan or God and Satan Fucking (co-created with Matthew Rogers).  Ferver’s solo performance works include Why Can't Condi Sleep (BRIC and Makor), Cliterature and Camille vs. Karen (HERE, The Culture Project, BRIC, and The Oni Gallery), Bad Dating (The Oni Gallery), and The Ophelia Project (The Culture Project).  As an actor, credits include Strangers With Candy (Comedy Central), Christopher Durang's Betty's Summer Vacation (Off-Broadway), and numerous other film and theatre projects.

Liz Santoro was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her early dance training at Boston Ballet School, where she graduated from the professional division as a student of Tatiana Legat. At Harvard University she completed her BA in neuroscience, taught dance technique, and served as resident choreographer. Since moving to New York in 2003, Santoro has worked with many choreographers including Beth Gill, Trajal Harrell, Sam Kim, Jillian Peña, Emily Wexler, and Ann Liv Young. Over the last five years she has had the honor of working with Ferver in many projects in several different capacities. Death is Certain marks her third appearance as a performer in his work. Santoro’s choreographic work has been presented in Cambridge, New York, and Paris. 

Jason Akira Somma is a practicing choreographer, director, and photographer experimenting on ways of transcending dance from the ephemeral state on stage to the walls of galleries. He is the first American to receive the Rolex Mentor Protégé Award for dance and will be collaborating with the Legendary Jiri Kylian for the Nederlands Danse Theatre’s 50th anniversary show. Jason has danced for Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Co. and the Sara Pearson/Patrik Widrig Dance Theatre Co. among others. His dance film work has been featured on the Sundance Channel, Independent Film Channel, PBS, NY Dance Film Festival, MTV Europe, American Dance Festival, Dance Theatre Workshop (NYC), Seoul (Korea) Film Festival, SPEX Magazine (Germany), and Impulz Tanz Festival in Vienna. His photography and film work have also been featured at Deitch Projects, P.S.1 (MoMA), Robert Altman Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, Va.), and the Anderson Gallery (Richmond, Va.). His photography work has also been featured in numerous periodicals and magazines in the US and Europe, including the New York Times, Dance Magazine, Dance Europe Magazine, Village Voice, Time Out New York, and the Los Angeles Times, to name a few. Somma has recently been commissioned by the Lyon Opera Ballet to create a new work for June of 2010, as well as the “moves” festival in London to create a new dance film to be aired on the BBC Big Screens.