Master puppeteer and Guggenheim Fellow Basil Twist’s Petrushka spins new magic around the legendary Ballets Russes production of Petrushka by composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Michel Fokine. It tells of the tragic love triangle between three magical puppets; the clown Petrushka, the alluring Ballerina and the dashing Moor, whose stories emerge amidst the swirl of the Russian carnival. Nine hidden puppeteers combine Czech and Japanese puppetry traditions in a tour de force of puppetry technique. A duo-piano version of Stravinsky’s masterful score will be performed by Russian pianists Julia and Irina Elkina.

“[A] wondrous, visually opulent puppet version of the Stravinsky-Fokine ballet … in Mr. Twist’s version, puppets play puppets, and when they come to life, they dance. It works perfectly, plunging us directly into the story’s imaginative universe …”
—The New York Times

“At this moment, no theatre artist in New York is showing more poetic force or technical skill than the puppeteer Basil Twist … [his Petrushka] is an astonishment.”
—The New Yorker