A key figure of American postmodern dance, Molissa Fenley presents in Venice two works that explore, in distinct ways, the relationship between body, music and threshold states.
State of Darkness – created in 1988 and long regarded as a demanding test of endurance and technical precision – takes the form of a direct confrontation between a single performer and the full orchestra performing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. In Venice, the role will be performed by Cassandra Trenary, former principal dancer of the American Ballet Theatre and later of the Wiener Staatsoper, who embodies this intense solo work in which dance engages head-on with the density of the score. “It is a very direct exchange between score and choreography. At the final climax, this modern woman emerges into the light: whole, strong and alive,” the choreographer has said.
Alongside this work, Fenley returns in a rare performance of Bardo, a solo originally created for Keith Haring on the tenth anniversary of his death. The piece is conceived as a tribute to the artist and their collaboration, imagining him in a state of passage, suspended between realms. In Tibetan tradition, the “bardo” is the liminal space between death and rebirth: a condition of transition that here becomes choreographic material and a meditation on legacy and transformation.
30 July h. 6 pm
31 July h. 8 pm
Tese dei Soppalchi, Arsenale
