A conversation with Seattle
The power of Autopsy of Love is in how close it slices to the bone, to use the evident metaphor. Byrd isn’t one to take Heine’s often florid protestations of what love is at face value. Continue reading Reviews: Spectrum’s “Autopsy of Love” & a Spotlight on Shannon Stewart
More dances should put people in jumpsuits, or better said, find a good reason to. In Spectrum Dance Theater’s revival of Donald Byrd’s A Cruel New World/the new normal (at Emerald City Trapeze Arts from April 11 to 13), this blistering, anguished, and tender work seats its audiences in front of a wire fence topped with razor-wire. Continue reading Spectrum Dance’s Revival of “A Cruel New World” is Explosive
This month, head to the classical concert hall for some serious time-traveling. Experience a cantata that was lost of the world for hundreds of years, then expand your horizons with new local music that’s hot off the press. No matter if you’re a fan of modern dance, medieval literature, or sports and games, there’s something on the calendar for you this April. Continue reading What We’re Hearing This Month: Classical Music Picks for April
Each piece spoke to common themes found in different contexts in each: relationship, power, identity, and intersubjectivity, if you want to get into a whole Merleau-Ponty line of investigation. […] For the audience, it’s a bit of a Rorschach — which couple did you like? Who did you want to see stick together? Continue reading Wevers / Spaeth / Byrd Dance Bill Closes a Sold-Out Run at Spectrum
This weekend and next, Spectrum Dance Theater hosts in its Lake Washington studio fellow choreographers Olivier Wevers (founder of Whim W’Him) and Crispin Spaeth. The Fall Studio Series also includes a world premiere from Spectrum’s Donald Byrd. Opening night is already sold out.
The Stranger suggests you make time to see it. Actually, everyone does, including us. Continue reading At Spectrum, Works from Wevers, Spaeth & Byrd
To bring this back down to earth, consider choreographer Donald Byrd’s statement that, with The Theater of Needless Talents, he wanted to get into how particular humans keep finding ways to commit atrocities against humanity. Rather than totalizing Nazi power, buying into the Reich’s myth, his work, iconoclastic as ever, breaks it into pieces. Continue reading At Spectrum, Donald Byrd Gives “Needless Talents” Human Faces
If there’s a narrative thread to LOVE, I think it’s in its furious attempt to make art from love, and more specifically, from love that’s gone missing. Set to Benjamin Britten’s three Cello Suites, played with an almost inhuman dynamic variety by Wendy Sutter, the work begins with the soulful Vincent Michael Lopez stepping into it–stepping through his clasped hands, a move he’ll repeat at the finish. Continue reading Byrd’s LOVE May Not be Supreme, but It is Full Spectrum