A daring fusion of two powerful and poignant masterpieces, the work combines Stravinsky’s Petrouchka with Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN. These two works have striking similarities: firstly, they each offer a challenging commentary on the human experience through a ‘show-within-a-show’ device (in Petrouchka it is a puppet show taking place within the main action on stage, in DAMN it is an alternate world set into motion by a gunshot); secondly, the main characters, Petrouchka and Kung-Fu Kenny, waver between being joyfully accepted and sadly misanthropic, as they struggle with their identity and reality.
As the puppets of Stravinsky’s ballet are made human and begin to experience emotions, we encounter the corresponding songs of Kendrick’s album: “LOVE,” “FEAR,” “XXX,” “FEEL,” “LOYALTY,” “HUMBLE,” etc. Remarkably, the two pieces are synthesized completely in their original order, so with each new scene in Stravinsky’s ballet we experience the next Kendrick Lamar song from the album.
