By Kevin Zimmerman
Like a lot of little girls, when Valerie Green was 3 years old her parents enrolled her in ballet class.
Nearly four decades later, Green continues to express herself through dance, but not for much longer.
This weekend, Long Island City’s doyenne of modern dance is set to take the stage in what is being billed as her last performance in “Succession” — a compilation of her many solo shows.
“I have never not danced,” Green said. “It is the main component of my identity. But I’m 42, and it just gets harder to maintain the physicality of it. It just gets harder and painful.”
While few people would say early-40s is old, no one would suggest an athlete that age remains in the prime of their sporting career — well, except for maybe a relief pitcher or two.
But dancers are athletes, who regularly suffer injuries, which take longer to heal the older they get, Green said.
“Most dancers retire in their late 30s,” Green said. “I had a significant back injury and I keep fighting to get my body back. If I can’t be 100 percent on stage, then I don’t want to be there.”
And on stage is where she has been since her mom and dad took her to that first class back home in Cleveland. Green later went on to major in dance at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, before making her way to New York City and the Erick Hawkins Dance Co. in 1995.
One of America’s leading choreographers, Hawkins revolutionized modern dance by creating movements that focused on the human body and nature, and not on the tensions of contemporary life.
When he died in 1994, New York Times writer Anna Kisselgoff wrote that Hawkins was, “firm in his belief that dancers courted injury through what he perceived as the artificiality of ballet technique and the percussiveness of earlier modern dance idioms.”
“I come from the heritage, legacy and techniques of Hawkins,” Green said. “I am keeping it alive.”
Although she may no longer appear on stage, Green will continue to run the dance theater, Green Space, which she opened in 2005. She will also oversee and choreograph for Dance Entropy, the troupe she formed in 1998.
In college she was required to take a choreography class as part of her degree, and she loves everything about the creative process that precedes a dance performance.
“In one moment nothing exists, but over time something exists,” Green said. “It is the body in motion, which I found fascinating. You get to create your own vocabulary and the possibilities are endless.”
Green’s final performance piece, “Succession,” is the story of her body of work told metaphorically through the human life cycle.
Culling from past creations, “Succession” includes scenes of birth, transformation, death and even rebirth.
“It is rebirth in the spiritual context, but there is also an actual burial and 30 pounds of dirt on stage,” Green said.
Green incorporates plenty of other elements besides earth into the piece. She includes water in one section and in another brings red fabric onto the stage where it can symbolize blood and fire.
“Succession” may be a personal piece focused on an artist forced to confront the end of one part of her creative life, but Green believes audience members will be able to connect their own life experiences to her dance.
“It is life as seen as many steps — the journey,” Green said. “It’s my own journey in a way as I go on to the next step.”
If You Go
“Succession — A One-Woman Retrospective Odyssey”
When: March 13 – 15, Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 5 pm
Where: Green Space, 37-24 24th St., #301, Long Island City
Cost: $17/advance, $20/at door
Contact: (718) 956-3037
Website: www.dance
Reach News Editor Kevin Zimmerman by e-mail at kzimm
