Choreographer Molissa Fenley has overseen one of the most celebrated dance events of 2020’s deep pandemic days: a live revival of her wild 1988 “State of Darkness” solo, set to Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” and performed by seven eminent dancers. . It made waves.
Since then, Fenley has quietly returned to work on new material, drawing on her nearly 50 years of dancing as the founder of Molissa Fenley and Company. This week at Roulette in Downtown Brooklyn, he presents the “From the Light, Among the Lamps”, a collection of short works created and updated over the last few years. Opening night on Wednesday felt like a private glimpse into her choreographic mind: no splashes, just a steady, rigorous exploration of movement to music.
The greatest strength of the program is Fenley herself, who, at 69, dances with clarity and poise, regardless of the limitations that naturally come with age. A generosity radiates from her upright spine and especially her long arms. (“It’s like he’s got two sets of legs,” remarked a friend, amazed.) It’s not one of those shows where a veteran artist makes a cameo for momentary respect. Fenley is there the whole time, holding nothing back. She is joined by dancers Christiana Axelsen, Justin Lynch and Timothy Ward, all in their 30s and 40s, and pianists Michael Ferrara and Enriqueta Somarriba.
While the evening features six separate plays, they could be chapters in the same story. Recurring themes are the lines and curves of Fenley’s clear movement vocabulary, based on ballet and reminiscent of Merce Cunningham technique, but developed, she said, around the idiosyncrasies of her body. Arms pass through oblique and angular stances, legs rise straight out to the side or hook over the back, trunks lean on their axes or twist in opposition to the hips.
Resurgence, too, is a subtle but palpable tension between bodies in space, which tend to hover or graze next to each other, or touch only lightly, more often than share their weight. In “Variation 5” of “Cosmati Variations,” over the eclectic percussion of John Cage’s Third Construction, Axelsen and Ward tracing unique paths that sometimes syncopate, reminded me of planets that somehow fatefully align once a century. As they gather speed in floor-devouring leaps, they maintain the calm breadth of more measured moments.
Fenley first appears in “Current Pieces, #1-3” a suite of solos for her, Axelsen and Ward in piano compositions played live by Somarriba. (The music is by Vijay Iyer, Nico Muhly and JP Jofre, commissioned by pianist Min Kwon for her America/Beautiful series.) Her opening pose—legs outstretched, arms arched above her head like a rising sun, and sunset – she is impressive. simplicity, introducing us to its fine calibration of outward projection and inward concentration.
Lynch joins the team for “Etruscan Matisse/Blake,” set above and beyond the others on a low stage. In the end, he becomes part of their circle, a subtle development devised with the help of Ryuichi Sakamoto haunting electronic music. “Lava Field” (from 2004, revised 2022) also mysteriously plays with configurations of four.
“De la Lumière, Entre les Lampes” (“From the Light, Between the Lamps”), the program’s title work, is also his most athletic, a pair of duets plunging into space, for Lynch and Axelsen, after Lynch and Ward. (Cassandra Trenary of American Ballet Theater and Lloyd Knight of the Martha Graham Dance Company will interject on Saturday.) With Philip Glass’s “New Chaconne,” performed live by Ferrara, it has a lightness that came as a welcome release.
“In the Garden (with Ryuichi),” is a thoughtful coda set to birdsong. Fenley, Ward and Lynch, standing on three different levels, appear to be doing the same choreography, but at slightly different times. (Michael Trusnovec, formerly of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, joins the cast Friday and Saturday.)
It’s like watching nature. “You know time will pass and you’ll move into the future,” Fenley he has said of the piece. “But there’s no sense of knowing what the future will be.”
Molissa Fenley and Company
Through February 3 at Roulette, roulette.org.