Pioneer Works Presents Valerie Green/Dance Entropy In UTOPIA

Pioneer Works presents Valerie Green/Dance Entropy (VG/DE) in a performance of Utopia on Sunday March 10th at 8pm at Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn. This performance is a part of their Second Sundays series. Admission is free, however online RSVP is encouraged. For more information, visit www.danceentropy.org.

Second Sundays is a free event series that engages Pioneer Works disciplines through live music, food, artists' open studios, and interactive programs. Food and drinks by Brooklyn Chef Collective and Pioneer Works Bar. Utopia is being presented in a special performance alongside the exhibition of Atelier van Lieshout: The CryptoFuturist and the New Tribal Labyrinth. Reservations and additional information at www. pioneerworks.org.

What does Utopia mean to you? Is it a physical, external place-or, might it reside internally?

Choreographed by Valerie Green and in collaboration with visual artist Keren Anavy with original music by Mark Katsaounis, VG/DE's newest evening length work, Utopia, explores the idea of a perfect place through dance and visual art. The work questions whether Utopia might be an internal place, investigated through personal and intimate moments and alongside the community.

Anavy has turned 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. The notion of what it means to be safe persists inside a dynamic art installation is in perpetual motion, being constantly built and dismantled. 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. An original sound score created by Mark Katsaounis combines electronic sounds with acoustic percussion to make textures and moods that are as varied as the human experience.

"Meticulously Crafted, Contemplative, Mesmerizing." - Catherine Grau, Queens Museum

Utopia will be performed by Emily Elizabeth Aiken, Daan Bootsma, Caitlyn Casson, Hana Ginsburg Tirosh, Erin Giordano, Kristin Licata and Richard Scandola. In addition to choreography by Valerie Green and visual art by Keren Anavy, the piece features music by Mark Katsaounis, and costumes by Deborah Erenburg.

Utopia is created, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Promotional support provided by the NYC & Company Foundation. Utopia was originally presented as part of Danspace Project's Community ACCESS series, which provides subsidized off-season rental opportunities for Danspace Project community members.

Founded in 1998, Valerie Green/Dance Entropy believes in humanizing movement, both in Ms. Green's critically acclaimed choreographic work and the company's mission to plant creative seeds in communities across the world. Intersecting mortal and transcendent, sensual and sophisticated, visceral and self-aware, VG/DE invites the artist, the audience-the human-into a compelling, physical experience. Based out of its home studio, Green Space in Queens, NY, VG/DE combines performance and specialized outreach programs to inspire communities in cultural institutions throughout the world. As a professional nonprofit dance company, the communities we engage with have included at risk youth, adolescents, the chronically ill, trauma survivors, immigrants, senior citizens and aspiring/professional dancers.