Spectrum explores a "Chekhovian Resolution" for the Middle East

Choreographer Donald Byrd, artistic director of Seattle's Spectrum Dance Theater, has big ambitions. His recent work has taken on such weighty subjects as the Holocaust ("The Theater of Needless Talents") and the war in Iraq ("Interrupted Narratives/WAR"). Yet the intensity of his stagings and the fierce prowess of his dancers bring his excursions into political theater closer to searing vision than knee-jerk agitprop.

Now Byrd has turned to another political flashpoint for inspiration: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To do so, he has called on the participation of Israeli choreographers Nir Ben Gal and Liat Dror and Palestinian composer-musician Wissam Murad.

A brief excerpt from "A Chekhovian Resolution" premiered here at last weekend's Beyond the Threshold international dance festival. The Spectrum troupe's usual athletic rigor and Byrd/Ben Gal/Dror's tense use of confined space promised great things.

So ... what does Chekhov have to do with the troubles of the Middle East?

On Spectrum's informative video blog (www.spectrumdance.org), Byrd cites a comment by Israeli writer Amos Oz on the best conclusion he can envisage for the ongoing tensions in his country: "There's either the Shakespearean resolution," Byrd summarizes, "where everyone ends up dead. Or there's the Chekhovian resolution, where people end up embittered, disappointed, disillusioned — but they're still alive."

Oz is hoping for the latter in Israel, Byrd says.

Byrd himself had qualms about reproducing this controversial subject too literally on the dance stage. "It's not a translation," he cautions about the piece. "You don't translate the Israeli conflict into a dance, because it minimizes how serious that conflict is."

Byrd visited Israel earlier this year to get an on-the-ground look at what he was taking on. There, a Palestinian told him, "The conflict is not ethnic — it's land."

"A Chekhovian Resolution," as a result, is an "abstract piece that's about how space is divided up, how that division keeps shifting."

To place strict limits on that space, Byrd and his collaborators are making major seating changes in the Moore. The audience will be on stage, on bleachers that nearly surround the dancers. The idea, Byrd says, is to create intimacy "between audience and performers, audience and audience, performers and performers."

To those who've never seen Spectrum perform in its Madrona studio, let me just say that this floor-shaking, no-holds-barred troupe is thrilling to see — and feel — close up. The novel arrangement at the Moore should accentuate that. It will also, Byrd says, offer different perspectives on the action, depending on where you're seated — "much like the [varying] perspectives on the conflict."

Expect some wit, too, despite the solemn subject matter. Byrd is not without a sense of humor. "Getting choreographers to work together," he quips, "is more difficult than solving the problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Still, he's pleased with the blended results he and his colleagues are delivering: "You can't tell whose is whose — or what's what."

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com