Anytime something comes from a place of truth, said Cassandra Trenary, it feels authentic. For her, this is certainly the case with “State of Darkness,” choreographer Molissa Fenley’s work challenging Stravinsky’s classic The Rite of Spring.
The basis of the piece, Trenary said, is for her to check “your ego at the door to allow me to find that type of vulnerability.”
Trenary, a principal dancer at American Ballet Theater, will perform at 8:15 p.m. Saturday in the Amphitheater with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Rossen Milanov — a bittersweet season finale for the CSO.
The evening’s opening piece, Leoš Janáček’s Taras Bulba, is a glorious piece of passion, Milanov said, with pure brightness and a unique finale. Although bright in sound, it is dark in theme; Janáček based his piece on Nicolai Gogol’s story Taras Bulba, depicting a 1628 war between Cossacks and Poles, and divided his work into three movements with three different deaths.
“The piece is, in its own way, patriotic, and very, very beautiful, but also incredibly intricate and interesting because of the way Janáček composes; he somehow connects his musical language to the rhythm of his national language and his Czech,” Milanov said. “It’s an incredibly innovative way of using the speech-like rhythm and bright spectrum of orchestral colors.”
The second, closing piece is Fenley’s “State of Darkness,” set to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, and danced by Trenary. It’s a vulnerable and truthful dance, she said.
The Rite of Spring, Milanov said, is one of the greatest challenges for any orchestra to play because the music is constructed so radically in the rhythms used and the very extreme, very complex combinations of sounds.
“It’s amazing how the piece still sounds groundbreaking, surprising and fresh,” Milanov said. “This is a fitting last note for the entire season of the CSO this summer; a recap of everything — with all the Mahler symphonies and Beethoven, Brahms and everything else. (Rite of Spring) is probably one of the greatest pieces in the 20th century.”
To Trenary, “dancing the most honest way I can communicate what I actually mean,” and she has worked closely with choreographer Fenley to break down every single moment of the choreographer’s masterpiece. It requires a great deal of “attention to detail, storytelling, and technique — it is just such an incredible challenge to take on,” Trenary said.
“(Fenley is) just simply the best; she spent so much of herself creating this work, and every single moment in the piece matters — she’s like an encyclopedia of intention,” Trenary said. “In order to share this work and its most truthful way, it’s been so much fun to learn more and more every time we approach it about what her thought process was, what was happening in the world at that time, what was happening in her personal life at that time. It’s a very vulnerable exchange, and I appreciate that so much.”
Trenary has performed “State of Darkness” before and is looking forward to bringing it to Chautauqua — especially with a live orchestra, as she is anticipating “getting to feel that music all around.” Chautauqua gave her her first-ever solo artist residency, during the spring of 2022, so “to return and to be able to perform on that stage feels like a homecoming of sorts,” Trenary said.
Fenley created “State of Darkness” in 1988 with her own instrument — her body. Completed in six months, she worked intuitively to allow her body to respond and listen to the music, she said; videoing herself everyday, she would determine what fit and what didn’t. Dancing a piece that is at “such an extreme physical and mental level, you just learn a lot about the human condition,” Fenley said.
“It takes extreme stamina and endurance to do it,” Fenley said. “But that is really, to me, the least of it; it’s really about metamorphosis and change and becoming.”
After witnessing the Joffrey Ballet perform Millicent Hodgson and Kenneth Archer’s reconstruction of Vaslav Nijinsky’s revolutionary performance of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (Rite of Spring), Fenley listened to Antal Dorati’s version every day during her warm-ups.
Although it was uncommon for the contemporary dancer and choreographer to work with a piece written in 1913, Fenley felt like “every time you hear that piece of music, it is the most modern experience possible; it feels like it could have been made yesterday, and it’s understandable that it was made in 1913. It’s just very worldly that way, and really crosses throughout time.”
Fenley created a narrative in conjunction with the topography of the stage, arranged into zones. The dancer is meant to represent everyone, she said, with the top center zone symbolizing restoration and rejuvenation; the center downstage a place of power, dominance, and mastery; stage right a place of ancestors and the supernatural; and stage left denotes listening and responding — all increasing in potency throughout the dance.
“There are times in the dance when the dancer is exactly with the music, times when she augers in what’s going to happen with the music, and times when she responds afterwards; so that there’s a constant conversation between the music and the dance — neither one leading,” Fenley said. “It’s like they’re in a duet.”
“State of Darkness” is physically one of the most challenging things Trenary has ever danced because of its length and how relentless it feels at times, she said — and that’s what makes it so rewarding.
“It’s amazing to be one body in space going on that journey. When you physically exhaust yourself and then push just a little bit further, it undoubtedly leaves my body very thin-skinned, and you have nothing left to perform. It’s very rare to reach that place as a performer on stage because so much of what I do as a classical ballet dancer is presentational, where you’re almost trying to hide the effort,” Trenary said. “So what’s cool about this work is it’s actually in the effort that it’s interesting and impactful as an audience member — to watch somebody literally pushing themselves to a point where you don’t think they can keep going and then they somehow do.”
