Valerie Green/Dance Entropy Jan. 20-22, 2012: Baruch Performing Arts Center, NYC

Rise and Fall choreographic dance work is based on the cycle of a civilization running the following cycle: a new beginning, tracing footprints and remnants of the past, developing population, agriculture, industrialization, modernization, gross consumption, awareness, terror, population dissipation and knowledge to begin again. Click more for the video clip ….

The inspiration for this work developed after a visit to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and a reading of the book The Long Descent by John Michael Greer.  History has taught us that the collapse of civilization is a natural process.  Archeologists’ state that the Mayan’s collapse was due to their civilization being built upon a nonrenewable energy source, resulting in agricultural failure.  In our modern industrial society we have repeated this pattern by building a society on a nonrenewable energy source as well, OIL. This dance questions whether we are on a slow decline, or a rise to awareness.

Inexplicable Space is a 23-minute dance inspired by one curious fortune received after a Chinese dinner, taking off into an abstract stream-of-consciousness work. The choreography incorporates information included on the small white slips of paper from the fortune itself, to the daily lucky numbers, as well as Chinese vocabulary lessons.  The movement was processed through non-literal interpretations of the fortunes, resulting in a mysterious, odd collection of movements and encounters amidst an installation of steaming crystal balls and flying orbs.