In Performance: Pavel Zuštiak/Palissimo – Bastard (NYC)

[Contemporary Performance]

Bastard Thursday--Saturday at 7:30 P.M. and Sunday at 2:30 P.M.
La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre at The Annex
66 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003.
Tickets are $25 ($20 for seniors and students)

The New York-based choreographer Pavel Zuštiak has garnered considerable accolades for richly layered, experiential performance works that combine dance with various other mediums. Bastard, the first part of a trilogy called The Painted Bird tackles themes of displacement, otherness and transformation. La MaMa, in association with Zuštiak's company, Palissimo, presents the world premiere of the work.

The Painted Bird is loosely inspired by Jerzy Kosinski's controversial novel of the same name. In Bastard, Zuštiak draws upon the book's signature scene--a wandering boy witnessing the painting of a bird in brilliant colors, causing it later to be violently killed by its own flock for being an imposter--to create a new work that transforms the internal landscape of agony and misrecognition into a collective remembrance.

The Painted Bird trilogy follows Palissimo's 2009 work, Halt!, in which Zuštiak teamed up with scenographer Nicholas Vaughan and three performers to create Palissimo's first site-specific performance installation, for the Whitehall Ferry Terminal. The company earned plaudits early last year for Weddings and Beheadings and Blind Spot.

About Pavel Zuštiak

Pavel Zuštiak is the Artistic Director of Palissimo Company, which he established in New York City in 2004 to pursue artistic liberty and communion with live audiences. Palissimo is known for sophisticated, multidisciplinary works rich with emotional content and surrealist imagery that explores the darker shades of human behavior.

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