Kate Wallich & Perfume Genius

Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas) and choreographer Kate Wallich return to the stage with a new collaboration.

Combining Perfume Genius’ experimental pop with Wallich’s choreographic lens, The Lesson is a raw, uncompromising performance work inspired by The Piano Teacher, the notorious novel by Elfriede Jelinek, famously adapted by Michael Haneke.

The Lesson examines what happens when desire has nowhere to go, and what we’re rehearsing when we practice “good behavior”. The work moves through repression, longing, authority, and submission in unstable scenes where roles shift, and the unsaid becomes manically physical.