Back to Press

DAY IN THE LIFE OF DANCE: Peter Boal on the Choreographers and Experiences That Have Shaped His Career
The Dance Enthusiast
December 22, 2023

Photo © Screenshot from Video - The Dance Enthusiast

...

MOLISSA FENLEY

With these bracing experiences under his belt, Boal grazed the city’s cultural gifts, roaming galleries, downtown dance venues and meeting edgy arts hipsters like Keith Haring at the art salons held by his friend Julia Gruen.

One day while viewing the monumental Matisse Retrospective at MOMA in 1993, he found himself standing next to Molissa Fenley. They spoke, she invited him to work on some stuff, and in 1999 he garnered a Bessie Award for his performance of Fenley's celebrated 35-minute solo State of Darkness set to Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring."

After digging a little deeper into that relationship, Boal explained he learned her spare, deconstructed choreography for the solo by standing next to her facing the mirror. Boal recalled Fenley "removed her glasses so she could feel me" literally connecting Boal to the choreography through osmosis.

Totally foreign to his ballet body, Fenley's creation forced Boal to reach for a greater understanding of becoming one with a solo and building stamina to meet its 35 minute run time. (In ballet, a solo rarely lasts longer than 5 minutes.) A fan of half marathons, this solo fulfilled Boal's "hyper aerobic investment in physicality." Most unusual for Boal "...was how my shoulder blades banked,  or how the micro movements in the right side of my abdominal muscles shifted." It required "hyper awareness of the body and fingertips."

In his debut performance, Jennifer Dunning of the NYT noted, "Mr. Boal added color and flesh to her (Fenley's) hints of victim and sacrifice through the quiet eloquence of his gestures…and much celebrated clarity."

https://www.dance-enthusiast.com/features/day-in-the-life/view/Peter-Boal-Career-Influences-Balanchine-Forsythe-

Back to top