KPLU Local News
(2010-02-14)
Listen Now:
null
Donald Byrd is the artistic director for Spectrum Dance Theater.
Florangela Davila (KPLU)
But this is the home of Spectrum Dance Theater and this is where gutsy modern dance gets made.
The dancemaker is Donald Byrd, whose choreography asks a lot from audiences. He demands a lot from his dancers, too.
"Listen to what I'm saying," he says.
Preview videos |
 |
 |
"It goes from side to side not up-down."
And when a dancer says he's not feeling well the artistic director says:
"You need to work through whatever you're going through right now, too. You need to start now , unless you are sick enough to go to the hospital."
Donald Byrd is tough and passionate. As a choreographer he's created more than 80 works: for modern dance and classical ballet groups; for the opera and Broadway.
When he was in New York, running the company he founded - Donald Byrd/The Group - he was best known for his jazzy take on a Christmas staple.
His "Harlem Nutcracker," adapted from a Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn score, earned critical raves. But running his own dance company proved too costly and after 24 years, his troupe closed.
In 2002 it was time for Byrd to reinvent himself. He chose Seattle and Spectrum but the adjustment was anything but smooth.
"Who I am as a person, as an artist ended up being a shock for people in some ways."
He arrived to an organization that at the time was a jazz company - not at all familiar with his aggressive style of modern dance.Board members quit. And so did most of the dancers.
"There were that things I wanted from them in terms of their commitment to get better technically, to grow artistically, and to be willing to do it my way."
But Byrd's way - intense or not - has worked. He raised the bar and drew new dancers from across the country. He raised the company's profile and added more performances.
And through it all Spectrum showcased Byrd's signature moves.
"I actually showed some stuff in Sweden in December to some young dance people there and they said, Everything is so big and so fast. It's big and fast and intense."
That style convinced principal dancer Joel Myers to leave classical ballet and dance for Byrd.
"One of the things I used to study before ballet was traditional karate and this a lot more physically intense. I've gotten much bigger bumps and bruises in this company than I ever did, getting punched and kicked. It definitely can be a very aggressive physical style but I think that aggressive physical thing comes from a passionate place."
Inside the windowless, hot, second-story studio the dancers are a flurry of movement . A dance equivalent of a double shot.
Byrd uses movement to play as much as to provoke. He loves to mash up ballet classics and to weigh in on worldly matters - the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq.
This time he focuses on China and its relationship with the United States.
"The notion that China and America, jockeying for positions as world powers, as dominant world powers And also this notion of America and China being what do you call them? Frenemies."
The dance explores a pair of modern tragedies - 9-11 and Tiananmen Square. The choreography riffs off "Beijing Coma" by Ma Jian, a Chinese novel about a protester in a coma.
The dancing also echoes one of the few Chinese government-sanctioned works allowed during the Cultural Revolution.
Byrd remembers seeing pictures of the ballet -- "Red Detachment of Women" -- as a teen.
"These women with these short bobs and these hats in arabesque with rifles. And that's a really strong image, a very different than what we had in the West with tutus and you know, like that."
Byrd's latest work is called "FAREWELL: A Fantastical Contemplation on America's Relationship with China." The dance is meant to be taken in up-close: for the performance audiences will sit in bleachers on the stage just feet away from the dancers. And musicians will play live from the wings.
Florangela Davila KPLU NEWS.
Spectrum Dance Theater performs "FARWELL: A Fantastical Contemplation on America's Relationship with China" Thursday through Saturday at The Moore Theater in Seattle.
| Spectrum Dance Theater's website | | To order tickets for FAREWELL click here |
 Spectrum Dance Theater dancers rehearse "FAREWELL," premiering Feb. 18 at Seattle's Moore Theater Photo by Florangela Davila / KPLU |
 Photo by Gabriel Bienczycki |
