Among the pioneers of American postmodern dance – she founded her company in 1977 and has since created more than 85 works – Molissa Fenley constructs On Tenderness around a constellation of images distant from one another in time: the Etruscan frescoes of Tarquinia, the ceiling of Palazzo Grimani, Michelangelo’s Ignudi in the Sistine Chapel, Matisse’s colours and William Blake’s visions.
Holding these references together is the idea of geological time, the extremely slow scale at which nature transforms, here applied to the bodies of sixteen young Biennale College dancers. The piece unfolds in five-minute segments, punctuated by the live drumming of Denardo Coleman – son of the legendary Ornette – and by texts by Latinist Hérica Valladares, a scholar of ancient Greek and Roman culture.
The choreographic score is structured around an unusual eleven-beat pattern rather than the more common eight-beat framework: each dancer must learn to recognise it in the bodies of the others on stage, adjusting their own counting in order to re-establish a shared rhythm. It is a work that asks its young performers to build mutual trust through physical contact, even before technique. “On Tenderness is a work about love and affection, calm and peace,” Fenley explains.
26 July h. 8 pm
27 July h. 6 pm
Tese dei Soppalchi, Arsenale
