INTERVIEW: Valerie Green heads ‘Home’
Photo: Valerie Green / Dance Entropy presents Home, featuring the work of several choreographers, including Bassam Abou Diab of Lebanon. Photo courtesy of Alex Lopez / provided by press rep with permission.
Valerie Green and her company Dance Entropy have stayed busy these past few years collaborating with choreographers from around the world. Now, audiences can experience these collaborations for themselves with a set of weekend performances at Gibney: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center in Manhattan.
The dance project is called Home, and it features the choreography of Green, artistic director of Dance Entropy, and five other choreographers: Maria Naidu (Sweden), Ashley Lobo (India), Souleymane Badolo (Burkina Faso), Sandra Paola López Ramírez (Colombia) and Bassam Abou Diab (Lebanon). Green tasked each of these dance-makers to create a piece centered on the theme of “home,” and then the artists were invited to work with Dance Entropy in New York City in order to further develop the work.
Performances of Home continue through Saturday, Oct. 1. Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Green about the expansive project, which began in 2019. Green is a well-respected choreographer and dance leader in New York City, and Dance Entropy, which focuses on “humanizing movement,” has been going strong for nearly 25 years. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What can audience members expect from Home?
Being that Home is an exploration into the meaning of home for each of us, and that we took this question around the world, audience members can expect to be taken on somewhat of a cross-cultural journey in place. Home uses text, voice, music, rhythm and dance to look into our individual ideas of what home means. It is through putting these ideas next to each other that we find the collective, the center of the diagram and through that, the things we can learn from our similarities and differences.
How did you first meet these choreographers?
I met many of the choreographers directly or indirectly through various international tours over time. What was important to me was to have someone more or less from each continent represented in the project. Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Asia, as well as the Middle East. My choice of Lebanon was very specific in that I have many memories of Beirut being mentioned in the news when I was young.
How did the collaboration with these choreographers work? Was it logistically difficult?
The choreographers came to NYC for a two-week residency. In that time, the work was shown … during Take Root at Green Space as well as one residency/performance … [at] Flushing Town Hall. One was live streamed along with a small invited audience event during COVID times, and one was for community. The creation process was in five phases. The past year was spent developing each of the works, alongside careful overseas dialogues. There were a lot of conversations, videos, emails and just about everything you could think of along the way. As I developed each of the dances, I wanted to pay special attention to honoring each choreographer’s intent as I progressed the work to a fuller and more refined version of itself. It has been a long process, but probably one of the most interesting and challenging in my career. I was also grateful to travel to each of these countries to teach and create a work on local dancers.
What’s the meaning of home for you?
The question of home, to me, stems from first the question of identity. The early part of my life was confusing being a daughter of an immigrant parent, growing up in a strong cultural household and trying to understand if I was American or Serbian. I spent many years working internationally and throughout the Balkans exploring my own identity, and [for] others, I see home as a continuation of this question. My home is my dance studio, my dancers and the America that I grew up in, which is embedded with my Serbian roots. Home can be an actual place and a place that lives in your heart and within the marrow of your bones. Home for me is a beautiful fusion of multiple cultures, and I am grateful for its many dimensions.
Do you feel that the meaning of home has shifted because of the pandemic?
I do believe the meaning of home has undeniably shifted. As so many of us had to quarantine from home or work from home, the safety of so many home spaces were both reinforced and called into question. This was magnified in New York City as even when we had to separate, we were still so squashed together. How the pandemic troubled our ideas of safety only lends itself to further explorations into the meaning of home.
Will Home have a life beyond this weekend’s performances?
It is our hope the Home attracts more presenters and theaters in NYC, nationally and internationally. It is a theme that resonates strongly for many, and we hope to share it as widely as possible. There are so many people, so many immigrants in New York City who have been relocated or dislocated, and here we are all living together, sharing space. I see this project as a way to build empathy and compassion for other cultures, other people and multicultural understanding through dance. Stay tuned!
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Home, from Valerie Green / Dance Entropy, continues through Saturday, Oct. 1 at Gibney: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center in Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
