But the clear highlight of the evening was Byrd's own The Possibility of Not Being. It's a completely abstract work, devoid of text, and as a pure dance piece allows us to enjoy Byrd's capacity to continually come up with new movements or at least new combinations of existing movements...
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Can dance do politics? Choreographer Donald Byrd, the artistic director of Spectrum Dance Theater, certainly tries in "Farewell: A Fantastical Contemplation on America's Relationship with China." Over the course of 90 minutes, he pulls out every possible stop as he fills the stage with multiple layers of action and sound...
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Watching Spectrum Dance Theatre's Farewell: A Fantastical Contemplation on America's Relationship With China last night at the Moore, I was reminded of something I read in college. The theorist and critic Fredric Jameson once argued that everything from conspiracy theories to cyberpunk, with their paranoid insights glimpsing at the hidden order of the world, were all essentially an "attempt...to think the impossible totality of the contemporary world system.".... [READ MORE (Link to The SunBreak)]

It is almost impossible to walk into a performance by Spectrum Dance Theater without being prepared: prepared to be challenged, educated, possibly uncomfortable, and thoroughly entertained.... [READ MORE (Link to Seattle Dances)]

Farewell, Donald Byrd’s new piece for Spectrum Dance theater, is described as “a Fantastical Contemplation on America’s Relationship with China”. That’s an ambitious theme for the second performance in the three year project “Beyond Dance: Promoting Awareness and Mutual Understanding”. With the premier of Farewell February 18-20 at the Moore Theater, Byrd says his intent was to continue to push audiences to think beyond the forms and movements on the stage... [READ MORE (Link to Artdish)]

Setting out to make art that is political, that has a stated meaning or intention beyond what it is itself, raises some itchy questions. Why “beyond” dance? Is he saying that dance itself is inadequate? A work created by a choreographer of Byrd’s ability, long famed for his punchy, fraught vision, and performed by talented go-for-broke dancers such as he has assembled at Spectrum, is going to “promote” some “awareness” and some “mutual understanding” despite itself... [READ MORE (Link to City Arts Magazine)]

Going in, I had no idea what to expect, all I knew was the dance was supposed to be about the relationship between China and the United States. I was expecting not to get the dance but, I was pleasantly surprised to find the performance to be meaningful even with no prior understanding.... [READ MORE (Link to Teen Tix)]

The movement — dozens of fast-moving miniatures within a continually changing group setting — is high energy incarnate. The sound — with its Chinese melodies, radio newscasts, Maoist propaganda and snippets of Beethoven — is all-enveloping. At the center of it all is a man well aware of what's going on, but unable to react to it — because he's in a coma...
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As artistic director and choreographer Donald Byrd watched, sitting next to composer Byron Au Yong, the company of a dozen or so dancers arranged themselves in a rows on benches, each taking turns barking out brief declarations of Communist dogma through a megaphone before rearranging themselves in a seemingly neverending Chinese fire drill...
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The setting is serene: the shores of Lake Washington in Seattle's Madrona neighborhood. The building is brick and modest, looking more like a park clubhouse than an incubator for the arts. But this is the home of Spectrum Dance Theater and this is where gutsy modern dance gets made...
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In “Farewell,” Spectrum’s artistic director and choreographer, Donald Byrd, takes the pivotal events at Tiananmen Square in 1989 as the starting point for examining commonalities between China’s and America’s recent histories...
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Watch several pieces of Donald Byrd’s choreography, and—with any knowledge of the breadth of dance training available out there—and the question of ballet and its relationship to the dance of the latter twentieth century has to come up. From the hilarity of “The Sleeping Beauty Notebook” to the downright creepiness of “I’ve got the Wilis,” Byrd’s work is simultaneously steeped in, and in complete rebellion against, classical ballet...
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Last weekend marked the halfway point of Spectrum Dance Theater’s Byrd Retrospective Festival - three weekends, nine shows, 16 works. The festival is an earnest reflection on the influence of Artistic Director and choreographer Donald Byrd, who has rapidly raised Spectrum’s status as a serious contemporary dance company since inheriting its direction in 2002...
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I was born in Seattle, and I’m terribly defensive of Seattle culture. So in all honesty, when Donald Byrd first came to Seattle from NEW YORK (i.e., land of knowledge and culture, vicious art critics and uncomfortable, overpriced fashion), I was the teensiest bit irritated that I was expected to be excited. I have nothing against NEW YORK. Never been there; no interest. I do have something against...
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The recent death of the distinguished American choreographer Merce Cunningham raised anew the question of preserving dance works. What happens to the material created by a choreographer who dies, particularly one whose own company was the vehicle for the work?...
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Weekend Two of the Byrd Retrospective Festival on Friday consisted, in part, of explosions of ballet classics — but with certain aspects of the source material clearly revered by Spectrum Dance Theater artistic director Donald Byrd, even as he turns them inside out...
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The dancers never merely "step." Instead, they slice and slap and stomp, wielding their bodies like percussion instruments. And they don't just get airborne — they get catapulted...
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Spectrum Dance Theater artistic director Donald Byrd celebrated his 60th birthday last summer, and the company is extending the party with a series of retrospective concerts, looking back over his tenure here as well as dipping into his career before he took over stewardship in 2002. Opening night roared...
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Clearly, Donald Byrd will have his say about classical ballet and story ballets in general. Last weekend, I saw “M.I.A.,” which is a hilarious spoof on the classics and some of their more arbitrary norms. This weekend (October 16–18), Program II featured excerpts from his pieces...
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This past weekend (October 9–11) was the first of three celebrating Donald Byrd’s 60th birthday and 6th year as artistic director of Spectrum. It is called the “Byrd Retrospective Festival,” but Byrd pointed out beforehand that part of its intent was to allow audiences to get a feel for where Spectrum...
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One of the bravest and most striking works of art to open this season is "The Chekhovian Resolution," which had its world premiere Friday night at The Moore Theatre....
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Last Saturday, I attended an amazing artistic event. Donald Byrd’s contemporary dance group, Spectrum Dance Theater, performed his political-artistic meditation on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, Chekhovian Resolution. ...
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Saturday's windstorm knocked out half the power at Spectrum Dance Theater's Madrona Dance Studio — but the show went on. And even with a compromised lighting scheme, the power of the dances came through...
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Since Donald Byrd took over the reins of Spectrum Dance Theater, the company has become primarily a vehicle for his own work. But not entirely...
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At the end of Spectrum Dance Theater's "The Male Voice" last weekend, one of the audience members asked the question begged by the program: How exactly were the works "associated with testosterone"? What was "male" about these "voices"? Spectrum director Donald Byrd turned the question back on the questioner.... [READ MORE (Link to Seattle Weekly Article)]

If you think of a phrase of movement as a figure of physical speech, then what does Donald Byrd's new dance say? I recently had the great luck to sit in on a rehearsal of Spectrum Dance Theater's production of Byrd's "Interrupted Narratives/War," which will have its world premiere at the Moore Theatre Friday and Saturday night... [READ MORE (PDF doc. 56KB)]

Saturday I was able to catch Spectrum Dance Theater’s American Stories. A program that contained Artistic Director Donald Byrd’s Living in East Podunk and Interrupted Narratives/WAR. The unifying theme being the examination of facets of contemporary American life...[READ MORE (PDF doc. 56KB)]