"State of Darkness" Digital Program Book

A NOTE FROM THE CHOREOGRAPHER

by Molissa Fenley "The title State of Darkness was taken from a line from Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. The writer (the reader in imagination) is awakened in the night after having fallen asleep before realizing that he was ready for sleep - as he awakens he finds himself in a state of darkness: 'I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for my eyes, but even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, something dark indeed.'

And I thought to myself, incomprehensible indeed, what causes a state of darkness?

For me, in October 2020, it is the state of the environment, the increase in the amount of endangered species, the amount of land lost through fire, through fracking, the loss of environmental laws and regulations that guard against the corporate state, rules that protect the land, the water, the air. It is the state of the eroding of democracy, the deterioration of laws that have guarded and protected all human rights, it is the condition of a state that continues to allow racism to remain within its founded systems.

It is the condition of the state that fractionally questions yet its majority quells change.

It is the condition of the state that allows for death because of not responding to scientific knowledge of how to curtail a pandemic.

State of Darkness is a rite of passage: at the end of the work, the dancer steps forward into the light, into a state of insight, illuminated by intuition, imagination, and revelation.

To work on State of Darkness, with this wonderful group of dancers, to embody the movement again myself in order to teach them, to watch how they have considered the dance within their own sensibilities, from their training, with their humanity, with their beliefs has been very fulfilling. Our rehearsals have been of discovery, of each dancer surmounting the necessary energy, of revealing themselves. Each dancer an individual and each committed.

But let’s go back a moment and put together a timeline of this particular occasion of State of Darkness at The Joyce: On April 30, while sheltering in place on the Mills College campus where I was teaching my very last semester after 21 years, I received an email from a person named Ross LeClair with a subject heading: "Joyce Theater - State of Darkness idea." Of course, I immediately opened the email!

Ross outlines the idea by saying, 'Our Executive Director Linda Shelton had the idea to present your work State Of Darkness, performed by a rotating group of New Yorkbased dancers in August/September. We feel a connection between the work and The Joyce (your performance, Pacific Northwest Ballet, etc), but also feel that it would be quite powerful and resonant in this moment.' Ross continues to explain that the dance would be performed for an audience of a tenth of the size of their seating capability, socially distanced within the theater. Would I be interested? Of course my response was a resounding YES! I choreographed and premiered State of Darkness in 1988. Subsequently, I danced the work many times throughout the United States, Korea, and Australia until 1993.

There were previously eight dancers that knew this work, and now there are seven more! The original eight are: Peter Boal, Rebecca Chaleff, Rachel Foster, Angelica Generosa, James Moore, Jonathan Porretta, Matthew Renko, and myself.