Scott Colburn

A great review by someone who gets it

Sound Design by Scott Colburn

I don’t want to give too much away, because the best parts about Petruchska (plays through April 22) should be stumbled upon like many of the steps I almost tripped over while wending my way with the rest of opening night audience through the dark passages inside the transformed Madrona Bathhouse studios, where Spectrum Dance Theater has its enviable home.

Petruchska is a classic ballet written by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (you may remember him from such canonical works as The Firebird). The story follows a puppet (played here by Vincent Michael Lopez) who performs along with other puppets at the beck and call of a cruel and demanding puppet master. As if things couldn’t get worse, poor Petruchska falls for fellow puppet Columbine (Jade Solomon Curtis), who does not share his affection. But Petruchska decides not to go down without a fight.

Artistic director and choreographer at Spectrum, Donald Byrd (whom I profile in our April issue) has adapted this classic story, changing not only the spelling of the name, but exploding the entire format in a fresh and vigorous contemporary exploration. Byrd’s staging travels from beach, to corridor, to television screen; on and off stage and in and out of the elements. He risks rain and even accessibility in order to get us closer to, or more mixed up in the emotional dilemma of Petruchska, who, no matter how trapped and powerless he seems, desperately perseveres.

Staging the show like an immersive carnival, Spectrum for the first time uses the entire bathhouse building, including the roof (next time, I hope they incorporate the barge floating nearby). Dancers moving among dimly lit hallways and wearing stark white masks give it the feel of a haunted house, or a carnival run with nefarious intentions (Uh, are you sure I should go this way?). Carnival performers haunt the outdoor stage before the show, maybe to entertain you, or maybe to trick you? A funny and loquacious Master of Ceremonies or “The Charlatan”, played by the always impressive Donald Jones Jr., seems both confidently in charge of the chaos he manages-and also emotionally unhinged.

Using three separate stages (one of which the audience can see only via live video feed; and thanks to great camera work is pulled off with amazing, visceral effect), Spectrum Dance Theater catapults the whimsical Pinocchio-like tale into a gritty and unnerving window into the lives of prisoners who perhaps aren’t fully aware of their imprisonment.

From the screams of the puppets as their puppet master hangs them from the walls, to the hot-and-heavy sex acts played out between the Moor puppet (Ty Alexander Cheng) and Columbine, almost in pantomime; to the fierce physical prowess of the Spectrum dancers that always half-enchants and half-scares me; to, finally, the ultimate act that ended (accidentally) with shards of a broken light bulb flying across the stage – the show is terrifying, captivating and deliciously real.

Donald Byrd has traveled to new risky heights in his mastery of using dancers’ bodies to tell the darkest and most primal pieces of the human story.

And to anyone distracted by the “technical difficulties” we saw in the first run, opening night, I hope you noticed the moment where the music suddenly cut out and Lopez (Petruchska) slowly departed the stage with only the sounds of the waves from Lake Washington lapping the shore to accompany him-it was one of the more haunting, effective moments in theater I’ve seen in Seattle. The ones that happen by accident usually are.

Spectrum Dance, I’ll take your work any day-“technical difficulties” and all.

GO SEE IT

Published in the Seattle Times

Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka,” it turns out, sounds just dandy as fairground-organ music.

The familiar tunes of the 1911 ballet, delivered in rinky-dink style, are the first thing to greet you as you approach a ragtag carnival set up behind Spectrum Dance Theater in Madrona Park. Other features of the festivities include a pair of hula-hooping/boa-waving dancers, some makeshift midway attractions and popcorn and hot-dog vendors for those feeling hungry.

An outdoor stage stands ready for action – and it eventually comes in the form of a crass and charismatic “Charlatan” (Donald Jones Jr.) determined to lure customers into his “Puppet World.” The journey involves going indoors and out, upstairs and down. But while components of the experience have a lurid, visceral strength, the transitions between them can be cumbersome.

Donald Byrd’s new multistage production of “Petruchska” (Byrd’s spelling of it) is a complete reinvention of his 2006 re-casting of the 1911 ballet at the Moore Theatre. It’s an adventurous use of Spectrum’s limited space, but some kinks in logistics and narrative pace still need to be figured out.

One thing that works just fine is Jones’ smiling, sneering emcee spiels (he and Byrd co-wrote the script). This little circus, it seems, is in even worse shape than it appears. The fat lady has gone missing, and the Ethiopian glass eater (“You like recycling, right, Seattle?”) doesn’t exist.

Jones, after sweating these setbacks with a desperate grin, then lures his audience inside to “a place where inanimate bodies can move.”

Upstairs, in Spectrum’s studio theater, he delivers as promised. In a fog-filled room, seven puppets in misshapen white costumes (Spectrum ensemble dancers) howl in fear of him. But his three special treasures – Petruchska (Vincent Michael Lopez), Columbine (Jade Solomon Curtis) and the Moor (Ty Alexander Cheng) – adore him to a craven degree. He takes pleasure, too, in their embraces and caresses, until abruptly scowling and shrugging them off.

We’re in “Island of Dr. Moreau” territory here as much as the realm of folklore, and for the short time Byrd places us there, it works.

The next stage – where, thanks to some high-tech wizardry, we spy on the offstage lives of these puppets – puts the audience in the voyeur’s role. It’s a clever, twisted touch, even if it does take away from the immediacy of the dance energy. Lopez, Curtis and Cheng, as three unhappy points in a love triangle, mix fight choreography, sexual bravado and dance vigor with their usual fearless prowess. You can’t help wishing you could witness their conflict in the flesh, though.

The show’s finale, back outside, unfolds in a way that uses the whole building. But that fourth move, and the lag in getting the action going the minute the audience is outside, sink the momentum of the piece. Mishaps with the stage set and Jones’ costume also tripped things up Friday night.

No doubt Byrd will tighten “Petruchska” over the course of its run. But his experiment does suggest that, when you’re dealing with material as intense as this, there’s a good reason to place it inside a single, tight, unifying frame as he did at the Moore.

Sound Design by Scott Colburn

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