Friday, January 19, 7:30PM
Where is Utopia? Is it a physical, external place—or, might it reside internally?
In collaboration with visual artist Keren Anavy, Dance Entropy Artistic Director Valerie Green explores the idea of an internal Utopia through dance and visual art in her newest evening-length work.
Anavy is an alumni of the NARS Foundation International Artist in Residency program and a recent recipient of the Asylum Arts Grant. She is turning her large-scale paintings into 10-foot cylindrical pillars to be used throughout the piece.
The pillars act as an extension of the internal world, constantly forming barriers, spaces, and other environments for the dancers to both react to and orchestrate. This dynamic art installation is in perpetual motion, being constantly built and dismantled.
The dancers’ internal Utopia explorations are unique. They might experience pain, chaos, compassion, suffocation, release, and intimacy. In a particular subtext, they feel opposing forces of safety/unsafety. These internal explorations manifest in solos, duets, and group sections.
Acting as both props and set, Anavy’s painted pillars contribute to Utopia’s striking energy and challenge the viewer’s conception of how art, dance, and design interact with and influence one another.
Performed by: Emily Aiken, Caitlyn Casson, Erin Gio, Kristin Licata, and Richard Scandola
"Anavy's site-specific environments cue us in on the realm that lies just beyond the traps we've set for ourselves. The images ask of us, what do we see, and from where we see, why are such worlds not possible?” -James Diaz, Anti-Heroin Chic
Collaborators
Keren Anavy, Visual Artist
Martyn Axe, Broadway Composer (Previous collaboration: Impermanent Landscape)
Deborah Erenberg, Costume Designer (Previous collaborations: Riptide, Hinge, Inexplicable Space, Succession)
Joe Levasseur, Lighting Designer (Previous collaboration: Impermanent Landscape)
Utopia has been/is scheduled to be performed at:
Dixon Place
NARS Foundation
APAP Booking Festival
Green Space
Movement Research
This performance is presented as part of the Entrée/Encore series. Entrée/Encore, launched in Fall 2016, is a series of artists’ talks, discussions, and performances at NARS Foundation. The program presents residency alumni and artists and curators in-residence in dialogue with the cultural community in NY and abroad. This public program contextualizes multidisciplinary practices and perspectives within the languages of art and critical socio-political concerns.
