Friday & Saturday October 5&6, 2007 - 8pm
Choreography: Donald Byrd
Music: Muslimgauze, Tin Hat
Special Guest: Koresh Dance Company
Spectrum Dance Theater continues “its exploration of ‘dance as social narrative’” with American Stories, two provocative works by Donald Byrd:


Interrupted Narratives/War (premiere) a fierce and moving submersion into the horror and outrage of war performed with power and daring by the Spectrum Dance Company.

Living in East Podunk (2003), a lighthearted wink at the seductive charms of small town life in America performed by guest Koresh Dance Company.

Both pieces with music by the distinctly original Tin Hat.

Five (4 new and one revival) exciting dance works by Donald Byrd and four up-and-coming guest choreographers: Kiyon Gains, Cyrus Khambatta, Olivier Wevers, and Daniel Wilkins.
In a town of many female choreographers, Spectrum welcomes new and familiar male choreographers who are making their mark as contemporary dance chorographers in the Seattle region’s burgeoning

dance scene. From Olivier Wevers, principal dancer at Pacific Northwest Ballet, who continues to express his interest in the contemporary dance idiom and Kiyon Gains, who also explores dance outside his more familiar terrain (Pacific Northwest Ballet), to Cyrus Khambatta and Daniel Wilkins, whose passions are rooted in the language of contemporary movement.

Madrona Dance Studio
Choreography: Donald Byrd
Music: Erwin Schulhoff
Extending Spectrum’s interest into the possibilities of dance as social narrative, this program of music and dance theater strives to remind us, through the music created by Jewish prisoners of the Holocaust, of the continuing violation of human rights around

the globe today. We are inspired by the remarkable will of those Jewish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps who – implausibly -- created optimistic, life-affirming art every day of their internment.

The composer of focus is Erwin Schulhoff who died at the Wülzburg Camp in 1942.