This week, Richard Alston Dance Company brings the New York premiere of Movements from Petrushka (among other works) to The Joyce stage. With Gyor National Ballet’s presentation of Petrushka just weeks later, audiences are invited to compare two significantly different interpretations of the same work.

Set to Stravinsky’s classic score, Petrushka tells the tale of a Russian puppet who comes to life and reveals human emotions. In the hands of Alston, the work is graceful and lyrical, with an emphasis on pure movement. The choreographer frames the work to mirror of the mental breakdown of Nijinsky, who danced the title role in the original production. In Alston’s portrayal, Nijinsky was ill-equipped for the public existence thrust upon him by his tremendous talent.

Gyor National Ballet choreographers Dimitrij Simkin and James Sutherland’s Petrushka is an artistic portrayal of the manipulation and dehumanization that occurred under the totalitarian regime in Eastern and Central Europe. Simkin is quoted as saying, “I present here not dolls with human feelings … but I present humans who act like puppets in a society controlled where misleading the masses and brainwashing controls the society. The death of Petrushka is a symbol of an ideology gone wrong, let it be either Communism or National Socialist excesses, or the sacrifice of human rights for the benefit of a cruel ideology.”

Listen in as Alston discusses his Movements from Petrushka in a recent interview with John Shafer on WNYC:

See Richard Alston Dance Jan 12-17.
Tickets are available here.

See Gyor National Ballet Jan 26-31.
Tickets are available here.