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New York Notebook, Jan/Feb 2024
Molissa Fenley, Roulette
Susan Young, Ephemeralist
February 4, 2024

Photo © Steven Pisano

Molissa Fenley, Roulette

Molissa Fenley’s program, From the Light, Between the Lamps, at Roulette was most likely not intended as a glowing source of optimism to pull us back from the looming abyss of life, but it wound up working that way on Jan 31. It comprised six dances made or revised very recently—a remarkable output given her incredible decades-long career—one that seemed in doubt after a serious knee injury in 1995. The unfettered joy and experimentation revolving around simply moving the human body felt like a salve and a return to what’s essential, in addition to the ongoing creation of work by a modern pioneer.

Fenley began presenting her work in 1977, drawing attention for her cyclonic, athletic solos and punk aesthetic. She incorporated elements such as percussion and South Asian dance influences that mostly hadn’t been seen together in a New York modern dancer. Flexed feet and hands, the latter to frame the head and upper body, and explosive jumps and spins, marked her fresh style. She made the most of the Covid-imposed rules for dance with her 2020 Joyce run of her virtuosic 1988 solo, State of Darkness, featuring seven powerhouse dancers from top modern and ballet troupes. (Three of them  guested at Roulette on later dates.)

In the new program, she showed new or revised work paired with music by thought-provoking composers like John Cage, Philip Glass, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Perhaps most surprising is that Fenley (born in 1954) performed alongside three outstanding dancers (Christiana Axelsen, Justin Lynch, Timothy Ward). Some of the movement felt softer and more organic than her earlier work. While Fenley's work is not prone to sentimentality, at times the dancers linked hands and passed under these arches, or leaned on one another tenderly. One solo gave way to another, or dancers entered in phases, or danced on three different levels. Some scores were played live, notably the Glass New Chaconne written in 2023. The intimate environs of Roulette (an old auditorium) combined with Fenley’s sui generis modernism to evoke a golden era of dance. And while it might feel halcyon relative to the chaos of today, to remember the horrors of the late 20th-century AIDS crisis might put current mayhem in perspective.

http://www.ephemeralist.com/2024/02/new-york-notebook-janfeb-2024.html

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