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

“This might be how the music of Perfume Genius is meant to be experienced” — Pitchfork

Combining Perfume Genius’ experimental pop with Wallich’s distinctive choreographic lens, The Lesson is a raw, live music and dance performance inspired by the film 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.

Longtime admirers know that Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas) has spoken about his love of The Piano Teacher. Its intense, clinical bleakness and its capacity to be both unsettlingly comic and tragic, are qualities that echo through the landscape of The Lesson.

Following their acclaimed 2019 performance collaboration The Sun Still Burns Here, Hadreas reunites with Wallich alongside his husband and musical partner Alan Wyffels and longtime collaborator Tate Justus.

The Lesson was commissioned by Seattle Theatre Group and the STG Performing Arts Series, with additional commissioning and development support from REDCAT, Liquid Music/Northrop, MASS MoCA, and WIP LA.