Utopia
Keren Anavy in collaboration with Valerie Green/Dance Entropy
What does Utopia mean to you?
Is it a physical, external place—or, might it reside internally?
Visual artist Keren Anavy in collaboration with Valerie Green/Dance Entropy, explores the idea of the perfect place through the mediums of dance and visual art. Utopia is an interdisciplinary piece questions whether Utopia might be an internal place, investigated through personal and intimate moments and alongside the community. The notion of what it means to be safe persists inside an environment that is continually built and deconstructed.
Utopia refers to the perception of place, the creation and destruction that occurs in a utopian societies. A dynamic art installation in which Anavy turn her large-scale paintings into 10-foot cylindrical pillars to be used by the dancers throughout the piece, also move on a video projected on the floor as a dynamic garden.
Anavy’s paintings were the point of departure for the concept and creative process of Utopia. The paintings were inspired by Chinese scrolls paintings and relate to the ideas of the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon, considered to be one of the wonders of the world, but they were never really existed. Anavy’s paintings printed on the pillars which act as an extension of the internal world, constantly forming barriers, spaces, and other environments for the dancers to both react to and orchestrate.
Concept: Keren Anavy & Valerie Green
Choreography: Valerie Green
Visual Art: Keren Anavy
Video Projection: Keren Anavy
Composer: Mark Katsaounis
Vocals: Katie Mullins
Lighting design (at Danspace Project): Kathy Kaufmann
Costumes: Deborah Erenberg
Running time: 65 minutes
Number of dancers: 7 dancers
Presented by:
- KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival, New York (2020)
- Alvin Ailey Theater, APAP Booking Festival, New York, NY (2020)
- Materials for the Arts, MFTA, Long Island City, New York (2019)
- Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, New York (2019)
- Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, New York, NY (2018)
- Wave Hill, Bronx, New York (2018)
- Queens Museum, Queens, New York (2018)
- NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, New York (2018)
- Jazz at Lincoln Center, APAP Booking Festival, New York, NY (2018, 2020)
- Green Space, Queens, New York (2018)
- Collaborative Concepts at Saunders Farm, Garrison, NY (2018)
- Dixon Place, New York, NY(2018)
- Movement Research at Eden’s Expressway, New York, NY(2018)
Photos:
Pioneer Works by Walter Wlodarczyk
Danspace Project by Stephen Delas Heras
Queens Museum, Wave Hill, NARS Foundation by Nomi H. Rave
Collaborative Concepts by Elbert Mills