Valerie Green/Dance Entropy To Present HOME At Gibney, September 29– October 1

Valerie Green/Dance Entropy will present the premiere of HOME, an international collaborative dance project, for three nights this fall. Performances will take place Thursday-Saturday, September 29-October 1, at 7:30pm, at Gibney: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway (entrance at 53A Chambers Street), in Manhattan.

HOME is an international cross-collaborative dance project with choreographers from six countries: Maria Naidu (Sweden), Ashley Lobo (India), Souleymane Badolo (Burkina Faso), Sandra Paola López Ramírez (Colombia), Bassam Abou Diab (Lebanon), and Dance Entropy's Artistic Director Valerie Green (US).

These esteemed choreographers were commissioned by Green to create a work for her company examining the meaning of home from their unique perspectives, drawing upon the significance of this concept in their home countries. As part of the project, she invited each choreographer to work with Dance Entropy in two-week residencies in New York City. Directed by Green, the dynamic full-evening work, which weaves together the different dances, explores identity, culture, environment, ritual, history, and community.

Green met the choreographers while performing and teaching abroad and knew she wanted to collaborate with them on HOME. Green said: "The HOME project challenged me as an artist in a new way. To take careful ownership in developing one's work has been a unique and rewarding experience, and I am excited to offer audiences a glimpse into what home means from distinct cultures and choreographers. In these divided times, connection and understanding across diverse cultures is more important and needed than ever."

This ambitious project was initiated in 2019 and has been shown in various phases throughout its development. HOME is conceived and directed by Valerie Green. Performers include Karma Chuki, Aidan Feldman, Erin Giordano, Kristin Licata, Lawson Pinder, Sara Pizzi, and Richard Scandola. Costumes are by Irena Romendik and lighting design is by Kathy Kaufman.

Tickets for HOME are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Advance web sales will be taken until 12pm the day of the show at www.gibneydance.org. All attendees will be required to adhere to Gibney's COVID-19 safety policies. Audience members will be required to provide proof of vaccination and to wear masks/face coverings at all times. Gibney's full COVID-19 safety policies can be reviewed at www.gibneydance.org/planyourvisit. The performance is part of Gibney's POP series, a program supporting the dance community through curated subsidized rentals.

Founded in 1998, Valerie Green/Dance Entropy (VG/DE) believes in humanizing movement, both in Green's critically acclaimed choreographic work and the company's mission to plant creative seeds in communities across the world. Intersecting the 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.

Valerie Green has been an active dancer, choreographer, and teacher in the New York City dance community since 1995. She created her own company, Dance Entropy, in 1998, adding a permanent company home in 2005 called Green Space. To date, Green has created 41 dances and 10 evening-length works. Her choreography has been seen throughout New York City and has also toured to various venues throughout the US. Internationally, Green has toured to Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Burkina Faso, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, France, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, India, Italy, Lebanon, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Cuba, both as VG/DE's artistic director and as an individual teaching and performing artist. She is a sought-after teaching artist who works with all levels of dancers and also leads movement workshops for non-dance populations rooted in the philosophy that all bodies can benefit from dance.

Guest Choreographer Biographies Bassam Abou Diab is a theater graduate from the Lebanese University and a folklore and contemporary dance artist. He has been dancing with Omar Rajeh (Maqamat Dance Company) for several years and performed four creations: Mushrooms and Fig Leaves, Hibr, That Part Of Heaven, and Watadour. He was also part of the intensive dance training program Takween, where he worked with Marcel Leemann, Emilyn Claid, Thierry Smith, Hooman Sharifi, Benoit Lachamre, Marco Cantalupo, Gilles Jobin, Kristina De Chatelle, and Damien Jalet. He has choreographed and performed Not Connected, Under the Flesh, Of What I Remember, and Incontro. He directed and choreographed Phalastinian KLarma, a performance for the National Academy of Rome at the Ravello Festival in Italy.

Souleymane Badolo, MFA, Bennington College, is a dancer, choreographer, and founder of the Burkina Faso-based troupe Kongo Ba Téria, which fuses traditional African dance with Western contemporary dance. A native of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Badolo began his professional career with the African dance company DAMA. He has also performed with Salia nï Seydou and the National Ballet of Burkina Faso, and worked with French choreographers Elsa Wolliaston and Mathilde Monnier. He appeared in the 2015 BAM Next Wave Festival; has created solo projects for Danspace Project, New York Live Arts, Dance New Amsterdam, Harlem Stage, the 92nd Street Y, and New York's River to River Festival; and was commissioned to create a dance for Philadanco.

Ashley Lobo is the founder and artistic director of Danceworx Academy and Navdhara India Dance Theatre based in Mumbai, India. He has performed, choreographed, and taught in India and internationally for over 32 years. Lobo has developed Prana Paint, a unique sensitizing approach that explores movement through yoga, breath, connectivity, and touch. Lobo approaches the idea of home as "the dichotomy of confusion and clarity that is India. Everything is chaotic but within that there seems to be a naturally evolving order, the natural progression from confusion to clarity."

Sandra Paola López Ramírez (EdM, MFA) is a latinoamericana dance maker, cultural organizer, improviser, and mother. Her interdisciplinary work plays with gender, identity, and sociality, and it has taken her through Abya Yala, Turtle Island, and Europe. Driven by her commitment to transformation and healing, López Ramírez co-founded the Institute for Improvisation and Social Action (ImprovISA), an organization where she has developed her work to radically integrate her creative process and her community organizing efforts. She has a vibrant artistic practice grounded on the investigation of relationships, especially between body and land, and is currently a visiting assistant professor in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso where she creates community-engaged artistic projects through her home base at the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts.

Maria Naidu was educated at Balettakademien in Gothenburg, Sweeden, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Centre. She debuted as a dancer in 1987 and as a choreographer in 1989. Naidu was a member of Jennifer Muller/THE WORKS from 1991 to 1998. After 13 years in New York City and eight with THE WORKS, she returned to Europe. She has created over 30 works that have been shown in 14 countries on five continents, choreographed for opera/theatre, and worked as rehearsal-director at NorrDans (Sweden) and Carte Blanche (Norway). Naidu also works with sound, light, costumes, and masks and continues to perform. She has worked with at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, in The Last Minute by Mattias Andersson, Cabaret directed by Farnaz Arbabi, and Life, Death, Sex, Pop by Tove Sahlin.

For more information about Valerie Green/Dance Entropy, visit www.DanceEntropy.org and www.GreenSpaceStudio.org.

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