Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2022 presents
State of Darkness
by Molissa Fenley
Country: United States | Running Time: 36 | Language: English | Year Of Release: 2020
About State of Darkness
STATE OF DARKNESS (1988, revival 2020)
Live-stream on October 31, 2020 produced by Joyce Theater Productions
Ross LeClair, producer, Nel Shelby camera
Choreography: Molissa Fenley
Dancer: Cassandra Trenary
Rehearsal Director: Rebecca Chaleff
Lighting Design: David Moodey
Music: The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky (McPhee arrangement)
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Antal Dorati, conductor
By arrangement with Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.
Premiere: June 20, 1988, at the American Dance Festival
“In 1988, I saw the Joffrey Ballet perform Millicent Hodgson and Kenneth Archer’s reconstruction of Vaslav Nijinsky’s revolutionary performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps. I was completely taken with the music. The next day, I went to find a recording of the score and happily discovered a recording by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Dorati…I listened to it everyday during my warm-up in the studio…As I listened to Sacre, I found myself adding things to the warm-up: a deep shuddering in my torso and abdomen, my body responding to the extreme range of the tympani and the strings. Soon enough, I realized that I was choreographing Sacre not to the scenario devised by Nijinsky and Sergei Diaghilev but to the arc of the music itself.
It was through the texture of the score that I entered the music and knew intuitively what to choreograph. I called the work State of Darkness to suggest that the figure—representing both male and female, ghost and animal—takes a ritual journey out of the primal state of darkness into light. To map it, I followed an innate voice that grasped the underlying aspects of the music. Odd things would happen in the studio. One occurred in the winter. I liked to work without artificial lights, and in the shadows I was sure I was visited by Nijinsky himself, who revealed that he had wished to choreograph the entire work as a solo but hadn’t been allowed to. I knew it was possible for one person to take on the shifting states of the music and so I experimented with changing who I was while dancing. Sometimes I was in the spirit world, sometimes in the animal world, sometimes in the present plane. I was constantly shifting personae, exiting my sense of self and becoming ‘other.’ The costume was a simple pair of black tights.
State of Darkness has many passages choreographed around the idea of fear and courage, from entering the shadows and delighting in an animal presence, to being extremely powerful, to being totally out of control. I am in dialogue with the music, sometimes ‘dictating’ what happens next in the score by anticipating rhythmic changes and accents before they happen, and at other times being responsive to accent changes after they occur. It is a very direct give-and-take from score to choreography.
I choreographed State of Darkness with belief in the ‘rightness’ of it and in the truth of the body in the music. With that certainty I summoned ‘my buddy Igor’ to help me make it through each performance, to withstand and transcend the demands of the dance by helping me find the stamina and endurance I needed…At the last crash of the music, where in the Sacre, the Chosen One is killed by the falling of the axe, this modern woman instead steps out into the light: intact, strong and alive.”
Excerpt from: Copyright 2015, Molissa Fenley – Rhythm Field: The Dance of Molissa Fenley, pages 56-58. Seagull Press/University of Chicago, edited by Ann Murphy and Molissa Fenley.
About Molissa Fenley
Molissa Fenley (1954), Founded Molissa Fenley and Company, 1977. Performances throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, Europe, Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and more. Commissions: from the American Dance Festival, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Dia Art Foundation, Jacob’s Pillow, The Joyce Theater, Lincoln Center, New National Theater of Tokyo, National Institute of Performing Arts, Seoul, The Kitchen, DTW/New York Live Arts, and others.
I have choreographed and performed my work since 1977. My work has been choreographed for ensembles, (my own dance company as well as for others by commission) and as solo works created in collaboration with contemporary visual artists, composers, and poets. Many of the works, although not in my current repertoire, are still foremost in my mind and personal body memory. State of Darkness, choreographed in 1988, was the first solo choreographed to Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps. The work was commissioned by and premiered at the American Dance Festival. I subsequently performed State of Darkness many times throughout the United States, Korea, and Australia until 1993. One of my most memorable performances was at the Brisbane Biennial in 1991 where I danced the solo work with the Brisbane Symphony Orchestra, one dancer with 114 musicians.
There are only fourteen other dancers that have performed this work, with appreciation I list them here:
Peter Boal, Rachel Foster, Angelica Generosa, James Moore, Jonathan Porretta, Matthew Renko (Pacific Northwest Ballet); Jared Brown, Lloyd Knight, Sara Mearns, Shamel Pitts, Annique Roberts, Cassandra Trenary, Michael Trusnovec (at the Joyce Theater, live stream: October 2020, with an audience: June 2021) and Rebecca Chaleff, (Stanford University, 2016).
State of Darkness is a rite of passage: at the end of the work, the dancer steps forward into the light, into a state of insight, illuminated by intuition, imagination, and revelation.
Bessie awards: Cenotaph (1985) and State of Darkness (1988 and 2021). Awards and Fellowships: Guggenheim Fellow (2008); American Academy in Rome, Fellow (2008) Asian Cultural Council (1996, 2001), Rhythm Field: The Dance of Molissa Fenley, Seagull Press/University of Chicago, (2015). Recent work include Pipes Going Nowhere with Rebecca Chaleff, Sara Mearns, Cassandra Trenary, music by Julian Julien and Rhythm Field, music by Jamal Mohamed. Upcoming: premiere of Cosmati Variations I-VI, Agropoli Danza Festival, Italy, July 2022.
Performer Cassandra Trenary began her professional dance career with the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in 2011, rose to soloist in 2015 and was promoted to principal dancer in 2020. Some of Trenary’s most notable roles with ABT include Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, Gamazatti in La Bayadere, Giselle in Giselle, as well as original roles created by Alexei Ratmansky, Twyla Tharp, Wayne McGregor, and Mark Morris. Cassandra has had the privilege of performing independent projects such as the Joyce Theater’s produced dance play, The Tenant, by Arthur Pita, Sonya Tayeh’s Unveiling, Twyla Now at New York City Center and Molissa Fenley’s State of Darkness. Cassandra’s accolades include being named a 2011 National YoungArts Foundation Winner, and a 2015 Princess Grace Dance Honorarium recipient. In 2017, Trenary was honored to receive the final Annenberg Fellowship for Dance.
Photo credits: Art Davison, Mohamed Sedak
About The Festival
The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) is an annual event showcasing films drawn from the world of theatre and performance. The festival presents experimental, emerging, and established theatre artists and filmmakers from around the world to audiences and industry professionals. The 7th annual festival will focus on work for the screen created by theatre artists during the Time of Corona. The festival will be held digitally from March 1st – 15th 2022.
Watch State of Darkness from March 1st to March 15th 2022 on the Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) website.
Support this film by Molissa Fenley by making a direct donation to them at the following details:
Read more about Molissa Fenley and State of Darkness at (https://molissafenley.com) or get in touch at molissa@molissafenley.com / Facebook @MolissaFenleyandCompany / Vimeo @user2966091 / Instagram @molissafenley / Twitter @MolissaFenley
For more visit:
- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/arts/dance/best-dance.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/arts/dance/molissa-fenley-state-of-darkness.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/arts/dance/dance-theaters-without-live-performance.html?smid=em-share
- https://www.dancemagazine.com/dance-criticism-covid/?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3https://dancehubsb.org/state-of-darkness/
- https://brooklynrail.org/2021/03/dance/Darkness-Manifest-Onstage-and-Off
- https://www.danceinforma.com/2020/12/05/cassandra-trenary-a-lifelong-dream-realized/
- https://blog.lifeasamoderndancer.com/2020/11/state-of-darkness-and-the-internet-of-dance.html
- https://dancetabs.com/2021/12/memorable-dances-of-2021-new-york/
- https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features/a-diabolical-uproar/
- https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwdance/article/The-Bessies-Announce-Recipients-of-the-2021-NY-Dance-and-Performance-Awards-20010
- https://cvnc.org/article.cfm?articleId=10049
- https://www.balletherald.com/like-neverland-quarantine-makes-you-forget/
- https://dancetabs.com/2021/06/molissa-fenleys-state-of-darkness-performed-by-lloyd-knight-new-york/
