After entering the gallery — which she and her collaborators designed and constructed for the exhibition — we notice first the lines and angles dividing the space into smaller components. But our observations of these minimalist forms soon give way to pleasure, as we are overcome by the sensuality of faintly-visible slices of atmosphere and recognize its existence everywhere — both inside and outside the gallery.

As one might find after immersing him-or-herself in a work by Irwin or Turrell, such revelations awaken the mind to excitements and possibilities forgotten or gone unconsidered for too long.

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Traversing this familiar landscape time and time again, Hansen’s work grows stronger and more focused with each successive exhibition; his figures become more tightly wound, his textures richer and subtler, and the energy emanating from the canvas more powerful.

Hansen’s pantheon of wild beasts suggests Native American myth and cosmology while the Kernal, his ubiquitous bearded horseman, serves as a kind of American knight-errant whose grail remains a mystery.

For Hansen, nature is dramatized through violent collisions of forms, scale, and species that often have sexual overtones — a sea of ducks crashing against a field of tulips, for example, or a huge grasshopper perched backwards atop a horse. In the presence of the Kernal, Hansen’s cartoon-like creatures and surrounding environment take on a more menacing quality. In one painting, an enormous bear looms over him as he glides by in a canoe. In another, he jousts with a giant thrashing fish on a log suspended over a rushing stream.

Sometimes the Kernal’s struggles are more sublime. In one of the more striking paintings in the show, we see him ride timidly through a field of swaying, red tulip flowers larger than his horse. Another one shows him briskly riding by the bare-breasted ruins of some colossal, misplaced Erectheon without so much as a sidelong glance.

The wandering Kernal is Hansen’s portrait of himself as an artist — oblivious one moment, fighting for his life the next, in a surreal landscape that resembles the strange rolling hills of his Palouse home.

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The polar opposite of the joyful and mercurial Morris, Byrd’s choreography was intense, dark, and somber. The pieces revealed hardship, struggle, and loneliness as integral aspects of the human condition. Unlike most modern dance or contemporary ballet that embraces this subject matter, Byrd’s choreography did not degenerating into tasteless clichés (Nacho Duato’s dreadful Jardi Tancat — a Pacific Northwest Ballet favorite — immediately comes to mind). While I recognized the authenticity of expression Byrd's work, the entire vocabulary of movement was so outside the familiar conventions of Graham, Cunningham, Taylor, or Tharp that I was quite unable to fathom how it all worked. It was not until I got to my car that I realized I had seen something unique and outstanding or even understood that I had enjoyed myself. What is more, Byrd seemed to have worked wonders with a young and relatively inexperienced group of dancers no doubt accustomed to lighter fare.

Lighter fare was what I got this weekend when I saw Spectrum perform Pineapple Poll, a ballet with music by Arthur Sullivan, based upon a story by W.S. Gilbert. It was the first part of the Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s Fiftieth Anniversary Production, performed alongside a spirited — if predictable — production of H.M.S. Pinafore.

Pineapple Poll debuted at Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet in 1951. Like H.M.S Pinafore, the narrative concerns the unrequited love of men and women of different social rank. The situation is resolved only after the two male leads discover that they were switched at birth and find themselves free to marry whom they choose.

In marked contrast to Spectrum’s April production at Intiman, the company’s performance of Pineapple Poll was an exuberant comic romp. Byrd based his choreography on the original, set by South African John Cranko, but transformed it, he said, into something more in line with his own sensibility. Part classical ballet, part broad physical comedy, it proved marvelous fun, all the more so because it diverged so completely from what I witnessed during my last visit with Spectrum.

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What the mainstream media has failed to discuss up to now is the fundamental difference of opinion between Christian Conservatives and other Americans on the subject of homosexuality.

Christian Conservatives and their allies do not look upon sexual preference as an innate part of one’s being but rather as a lifestyle choice. For them, homosexuals have made a decision to lead their lives in a way that goes against Biblical teaching. What’s more, desire for people of the same sex can be remedied through pastoral counseling and prayer. It seems that any gay man or lesbian, no matter how committed to same-sex love he or she may be, can become straight if he or she accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior. The reason Christian Conservatives are so opposed to gay couples adopting children is that they consider this a strategy to indoctrinate new generations into their deviant lifestyle.

This is a load of crap. For me and for everyone I know — however straight or gay they may be — sexual preference is something we were born with, not something we made a decision about during puberty or afterwards.

To hear Senators Santorum, Frist, and Brownback discuss the issue of gay marriage, you would think that letting men marry men and women marry women would lead to a complete breakdown of civilization. Do they really think that husbands and wives would walk away from happy marriages and run off to the nearest chapel with members of their own sex to exchange rings? This is absurd; the laws of nature determine our sexual preference, not the laws of Congress.

I have a strange suspicion that those who would disagree with this last statement may in fact have doubts about their own sexual preferences and are afraid of what they might do if unrestrained by such laws. As we have seen in the past, those institutions most outspoken in their denunciations of homosexuality — the Catholic Church and U.S. Armed Forces immediately come to mind — are actually secretive and self-deluded bastions of these same behaviors. Could the Senate Republican leadership be this country’s most elite group of closet cases?

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Frank takes a careful look at his home state to determine why farmers, union members, and other Kansas residents continue to throw their support behind a political movement so squarely at odds with their own economic self-interest. What he finds is that discussions of economic issues have essentially disappeared from political discourse, only to be supplanted by religious ones such as abortion and gay marriage. The Republican Party has championed the causes of social conservatives while advancing the agendas of big business and the wealthiest U.S. citizens at their expense. The Democrats, for their part, have abandoned the issues of working people in favor of those of business — such as NAFTA — and have subsequently lost their traditional constituencies in places like Wichita.

Kansas, a 'free' state with a tradition of prairie populism and the home of eccentrics such as the armed abolitionist John Brown, has a rich, complex history and Frank delights in telling its story. In so doing, he lays waste to the conventional notions of red and blue America espoused by writers such as David Brooks, who fail to recognize the economic forces at work in this country.

If you want to read an insightful book about the contemporary political landscape during this Presidential election season, this would be the one to choose.

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While this old-school Marxist critique of capitalism might not seem particularly novel, there are moments in this film that reveal the complex social and economic realities of the world we inhabit.

The Royal Dutch Shell Company is well-known for its support of repressive African regimes and for the large-scale environmental disasters it has left behind on that unfortunate continent. When a small group of young, woolly protesters show up at the modest home of the chairman one winter morning carrying a large banner emblazoned with the word "Murderer," the lord and lady of the manor appear hurt and confused, then courteously offer tea to the suddenly sheepish rabble. The old man is charming, witty, good-looking, down-to-earth, and most kind. Royal Dutch Shell, on the other hand, is not. How do we reconcile this situation? We can’t, of course; that is what’s so vexing about ‘the corporation’ — it allows us the possibility to lead this kind of dual life.

Clocking in at over three hours, the movie is rather long and somewhat ponderous at times. There are so many examples of corporate evil brought up in this film, one’s indignation eventually turns to weariness. Many of these — I am thinking in particular of the Florida television reporters whose story on bovine drugs and contaminated milk was censored by Fox TV — could be documentaries in their own right. Others seem to more-or-less miss their mark.

In an attempt to conclude this decidedly bleak film on a hopeful note, we are told the story of the brave Bolivian peasants who staged riots and managed to take their water back from corporate giant Bechtel. While it is inspiring to hear of a group of indigenous people reclaiming a resource that had been part of their community for a millennium or so, we are left to wonder whether or not they have the knowledge and capital to manage the modern utility their community now requires. According to an article published in the New Yorker a few years back, they did not and the water is still not flowing. While the Developing World longs to control its own destiny, it is not easy to for a nation or community to extricate itself from such pacts with the devil.

In the end, however, this film is an excellent look at the underlying causes of our planet’s growing social disorder and environmental sickness. Check it out if you have a chance.

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