• Concept/Direction/Choreography Pavel Zuštiak
• Original Music Composed by Christian Frederickson
• Performace Jaroslav Viňarský
• Live Music Performed by Christian Frederickson
• Lighting Design Joe Levasseur, Tomas Moravek
• Set Design Nick Vaughan
• Projection Design Manny Palad

• World Premiere: KioSK Festival, Stanica, Slovakia, July 22-23, 2010, stanica.sk
• US Premiere: La MaMa, New York, NY, November 11-21, 2010, lamama.org
• Running time: 75 minutes

2010 Time Out New York Honorable Mention for The Painted Bird: Bastard

"Bastard is searing."
—Gia Kourlas, The New York Times

"Bastard earns its emotional extremity – with tenderness and quiet."
—Apollinaire Scherr, Financial Times ★★★★

"Bastard had both magic and mystery."
—Leigh Witchel, DanceViewTimes

In Bastard, Pavel Zuštiak, in collaboration with composer Christian Frederickson and award-winning Slovak dancer Jaro Viňarský, tackles the themes of displacement, otherness and transformation. The first installment of his trilogy The Painted Bird, the piece is loosely inspired by Jerzy Kosinski’s controversial novel of the same name. Zuštiak draws upon the book’s signature scene—a wandering boy witnessing the painting of a bird into brilliant colors causing it later to be violently killed by its own flock—to create a new work that transforms the internal landscape of agony and misrecognition into a collective remembrance.

Bastard was developed and supported during residencies at Stanica Zilina-Zariecie (Slovakia) and Grotowski Institute (Poland). Bastard was created with financial support of Trust for Mutual Understanding, Greenwall Foundation, CEC Artslink, Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, US Embassy in Slovakia, Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic and NF Slovak Telekom. An early research of the work was supported by Movement Research in New York City and dance department at University of California, Irvine.