One Night Only: Dance Legend Molissa Fenley Comes to the Fremont Abbey

A very special event at a lovely space: this Friday, the Fremont Abbey, resident home of Karin Stevens Dance among other arts services, is bringing in dance innovator and pioneer Molissa Fenley (7:30 p.m.; tickets $15-$20).

Born in Las Vegas in 1954, Fenley spent part of her childhood in Nigeria, where her father worked for USAID, before returning to the US. She graduated with a degree in dance in 1975, and moved to New York where she began a career as a choreographer now in its fourth decade.

Fenley's choreography has been seen in Seattle twice over the past few years: in 2008, PNB presented her State of Darkness (1988), a solo set to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (Michael van Baker, writing for Seattlest, said of the piece that "[Jonathan] Porretta visibly drips with sweat, the sequence comes around again and again, and you start rooting for him like a gymnast at the Olympics but without the judges and crowd and you realize that one salute must be it, must be how it ends, when it ends"), and Seattle Dance Project commissioned a new piece from her for Project 1 in 2009.

But this weekend, Fenley will be performing her own work, giving audiences the chance to see an icon dancing her own choreography: two solos, 1985's Regions - Chair, Ocean Walk, Mesa and 2009's Mass Balance. Seattle Dance Project will also be previewing Places in the Air, a new piece commissioned from Fenley that will premiere as part of SDP's Project 4 this January.