On April 18, The Flight of Icarus, Stella Feldschuh’s senior work, premiered at the Martha Hill Dance Theater. The performance combined theater and dance to tell the mythic story of Daedalus and Icarus.
The show started with a scene between an earnest Daedalus, played by Thelonious Shores, and the gleefully despotic King Minos, played by Arya Shah. The set was bare to begin with, which drew the audience’s eyes to the detailed costumes.
We were soon introduced to Perdix, a boy-turned-partridge played by Jamie Costell. Perdix’s backstory was told in silhouette, and we learned that he was killed by Daedalus, his uncle, who was envious of his talents as a craftsman. Perdix reappeared as a haunting presence throughout the performance, fully clothed in an intricate ensemble of feathers.
In an attempt to flee the tyranny of King Minos, Deadalus constructed wings for himself and his son Icarus, played at the beginning of the show by Neil Cipkowski. When they took flight, the performance shifted into dance, and Nate Tantral-Johnson took Cipkowski’s place as Icarus.
Tantral-Johnson, wearing a large pair of silver, skeletal wings, moved confidently across the stage. Lucy Elliot entered, performing the role of The Sun in flowing yellow fabric, and the two played around each other until he succumbed to her warmth. The ensemble dancers, who functioned as a Greek chorus of sorts, entered and lay Icarus to rest.
The performance switched back to drama with a confrontation between Daedalus and Perdix while the former cradles his son’s lifeless body. The show concluded with Icarus and Perdix stripping each other of their wings.
Feldschuh had been working on the production for the past two years. She studies costume design at Bennington and created the elaborate garments worn by the actors and dancers herself. She worked closely with drama faculty Tilly Grimes to tie all the visual aspects of the show together, using watercolor renderings to design the production.
Feldschuh also had support from a handful of her fellow students when it came to the other areas of the performance. Gio Tosi and Brogan Donston choreographed the dances, Nathan Kerr wrote the script, and alongside Feldschuh, Moxie McBreairty co-directed the production. After working on The Flight of Icarus by herself for the first year, Feldschuh found the collaborative process particularly rewarding. She explained that the scale of the production was made possible by the breadth of her collaborators.
It was important to Feldschuh to communicate the emotional elements of the story to everyone working on the production. She wanted to humanize the characters, something that she felt was commonly overlooked by representations of the myth of Icarus and Daedalus. She believed that a focus on emotion and humanity would amplify the tragedy of the story, which also was what made the fusion of dance and drama necessary. Feldschuh originally envisioned the production, specifically the flight scene, to be danced. However the narrative constraints of the form led her to incorporate theater.
At times the expansiveness of The Flight of Icarus felt meta to Feldschuh, as if in trying to create something that felt bigger than her, she was flying too close to the sun. A particularly challenging aspect was the construction of Icarus’s wings. Feldschuh had to figure out what materials could withstand the amount of movement involved in the dance performance, with no previous examples of the same character to reference.
Feldschuh will continue her exploration of the myth of Icarus and Daedalus with her senior visual arts work, a painting depicting Icarus which will be on view at Usdan Gallery’s senior show at the end of this term.
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