Petrushka: an AI Ballet, will be performed by Eugene Ballet at the Hult Center in Eugene on Saturday, April 11 and Sunday, April 12. More information can be found here.
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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. At its best, artificial intelligence is a great complement to human endeavors. At its worst, AI is an existential crisis that makes humans irrelevant. Today on the show, you'll hear about an unlikely pairing of AI and human creativity: a ballet. The choreographer at the Eugene Ballet will talk about her latest creation, Petrushka: an AI ballet. It's a bold social commentary set to music and movement. Then in the second part of the show, we'll check in with our own reporter about the latest budget crisis at Eugene's 4J. Suzanne Haag, the assistant artistic director and resident choreographer for the Eugene Ballet, thanks for coming in and talking with us.
Suzanne Haag: Thanks for having me here.
Dunne: We're talking about this new ballet that you've created. Let's start here. I want you to describe the ballet, but first, why did you want to make this particular ballet?
Haag: That's a great question. Reimagining Petrushka has been something I've wanted to do for a long time. It's a reimagining of a ballet from 1911. I've always wanted to explore ballet through an AI lens, because I think ballet has always had this tradition of being fascinated by humans playing beings that aren't human but look human. In the Nutcracker, for example, you have someone playing a nutcracker doll. In ballets like Coppélia, you have people playing a group of dolls that look human but don't move in a human way.
Dunne: That's fascinating. I think to choreographers, can you explain that in terms of this, and this is maybe an extremely basic question for you, but developing a ballet's choreography, how do you do it? Is it that you have this idea and you start small? I always think of ballet as being so grand. Do you start with the big picture and bring it in, or is it the exact opposite?
Haag: For myself as a choreographer, it's different for everyone, and for me it's different by project. I do plan ahead. I start with a big vision of what I want to create or see, or what I want the audience to experience. When I'm physically working on building the steps with dancers, I do start very small. For Petrushka, I started planning two years before we premiered it in 2023. Then we have a three-week period in the studio with the dancers where I'm actually setting the movement on them, but the big overarching scope has already been thought out.
Dunne: Talk about the interplay with the dancers. Do you solicit a lot of feedback from them? They're doing the movements, and of course you know what the movement is supposed to look like, but are there times when they say, 'Actually, I think it would look better this way,' or 'I can't do this particular movement. Can we try something else?'
Haag: Yes. My process is very collaborative with the dancers, and I've been working with a lot of these dancers at Eugene Ballet for years now. It's definitely a trial-and-error process, and the dancers feel very comfortable saying, 'I feel this is awkward for me. Could I try it in the other direction?' They're very open to making suggestions, but they also understand that I have a vision that I want us all to accomplish. We do laugh a lot, because things don't always go well the first time. It's a playful atmosphere, trying to figure out how we're going to make a ballet look and feel the way we want, and how we want the audience to experience it.
Dunne: Talk about that. What are patrons going to see when they come to this ballet?
Haag: Sure. Petrushka, the original 1911 ballet, is a story about three puppets. It's full of heart, very emotional and comedic in its nature. In my treatment of this, I'm taking those three main character puppets and translating them into AI beings, each with a function. Petrushka is an emotional, empathetic AI being. There's a companion who is programmed for love, and then there's a warrior. Their relationship in this version is a bit of a love triangle, which I've kept fairly true to the original story, set in a modern, futuristic setting. The audience is going to see the interaction of those three dancers, whose movements are not human. It's a full-cast production. There will be 22 dancers, and the rest are playing humans. Their movement is less human, as a social commentary on how AI, technology and social media are shifting the way we interact with each other.
Dunne: The key word in AI is 'artificial,' and yet there's nothing artificial about the dancers. Getting back to the interplay with the dancers: if you told someone to dance like a robot, we all have that sort of plodding idea of what robot movement looks like. But I imagine it's very different in practice. How did you coax out the real amid the artificial?
Haag: It was a lot of experimenting. I'm really interested, as a choreographer, in how dancers interact with each other, and as a person, I'm interested in how humans interact with each other. We did a lot of experimenting. For example, the warrior and the companion have a duet together, a romantic pas de deux between two robots. Key phrases we kept using were, 'How can we make this more functional, as if you are two pieces of a machine? How would you move together? How would you interact if you're trying to create something functional?' Their behavior is anything but functional. It's silly and ridiculous, really, but we kept trying to make it look more and more like machinery, and I think the result is something quite fun to watch.
Dunne: How similar is it to the original? Where will people, especially those familiar with the ballet, say, 'Oh, wow, that took a turn'?
Haag: Stravinsky's music is very bossy. The score is definitely set up to tell a story, and the plot of our version follows that to some degree, especially with the three main AI beings who are puppets in the original. The character of Petrushka is, I would say, recognizable to anyone familiar with the original version. What is definitely different is how we treat the stage and how I treat the groups of people, the humans. We have video screens on the stage representing what the dancers are hoping to see through VR goggles and how they interact with each other. There's a scene where two human dancers put on VR goggles. My humans never touch each other in the ballet, but up on the screens, they're physically dancing and touching each other. Then you see them on the stage, unable to touch.
Dunne: Artificial intelligence in its best form is sort of this idea that it can do something a human wouldn't have to do, maybe something mundane or unsafe. But obviously, everything about ballet is human. Talk about what you're trying to say, especially because one of the biggest fears is, 'AI is going to replace me.'
Haag: I am most interested in human interaction. That's why I'm a choreographer. That's why I love live dance, theater and performance. To show humans behaving in a less connected way than the AI characters in this ballet highlights that juxtaposition: what is technology doing to us? How is it perhaps taking away our connection with each other, and are we OK with this? I want it to be, for the audience, a little bit of a mirror. I'm not a scientist. I don't have answers about what the advent of AI is going to do to us. But I have fears, as I think we all do, and I just wanted to show that to the audience. Also, my way of coping with things that are scary is through humor.
Dunne: Obviously the fear of AI, as we've discussed, is this idea of replacement. I've heard from people in different artistic realms that AI cannot replace true human creativity. So in a way, your ballet is showcasing the fears we have but also kind of smashing through them. It's showing that this ballet could not be done without humans.
Haag: Sure. I think our art form, and my job as a choreographer, is relatively safe, at least for now. But it is really interesting how people are responding to this show. We first created it in 2023, and at the time it felt more like science fiction. Now, bringing it back to the stage, I've made some adjustments, but it's similar in scope, and it hits differently. People are reacting to AI differently now than they were in 2023. Most people are simply curious: What does an AI ballet look like? But we have had some people call in and say, 'How dare you replace the dancers and choreographers with AI,' which is not at all what we're doing and not something we could do. I'm very much a human choreographer. But it is interesting that people have that fear and that reaction: 'Oh no, we want to see real art.' Which is exactly what this is.
Dunne: The press materials talk about honoring dance history while also pushing the art forward. Talk about how this ballet does that.
Haag: Ballet is always changing. Art is always changing with the times, and the use of technology in our set and how it relates to the dancers on stage is definitely something new in our realm. It creates a very interesting visual, playing with both video images of dancers and their actual, physical forms on stage. That's something I hadn't worked with before this project, and it definitely called up a lot of different ways of creating. We will see more technology coming into live theater spaces. Theaters used to have candles, so we're always pushing forward. And I think just the stories we tell, taking a ballet that was originally about puppets and making it relevant, clearly it is relevant. People are curious about what this ballet means, whether it involves AI, how it's related. Is it just about AI? Are we using AI? I think just keeping a pulse on what's happening in our world and creating ballet, even as an old art form, is what keeps it alive.
Dunne: With that in mind, if someone out there is listening and has maybe never been to a ballet before, is this a good one to attend? Is this going to resonate with a first-timer?
Haag: Absolutely. When we first performed it, a lot of people said the show was total eye candy. There's a lot to look at. The physicality of the dancers is amazing in this show. It's also a double bill. Petrushka is about a 45-minute ballet, and we're opening with Martha Graham's Dark Meadow Suite, which is a modern dance piece: very physical, very beautiful and very organic, which is the opposite of Petrushka. You don't need to know anything about modern dance or ballet to enjoy this particular show. It's really two pieces that are visually stunning and expressive. Audiences can sit back and experience them however they need to, whether that means laughing at Petrushka or being a little scared by it. I think this is a great ballet for someone who has no connection to the art form to experience.
Dunne: Good enough. She's Suzanne Haag, assistant artistic director and resident choreographer at the Eugene Ballet, talking about Petrushka, an AI Ballet, which is running now. Thank you so much for coming in and talking with us.
Haag: Thank you so much.
Dunne: Rebecca Hansen-White has been following the brutal budget challenges at 4J and gets us up to speed now. Friend of the show, Rebecca Hansen-White, always great to see you. Thanks so much for coming in and chatting with us.
Rebecca Hansen-White: Always great to be here.
Dunne: Not a great subject, but let's get people up to speed. This is a really difficult budget challenge with 4J. How did we get here?
Hansen-White: 4J was already facing a $30 million shortfall this year, and the district just found out it's actually going to be about $10 million to $20 million worse than they thought. That's a pretty big number. I think how we got here is a number of trends that have been coming together for quite a long time, including lower enrollment across Oregon and in Eugene, as well as a challenging property tax structure in Oregon. For the increased deficit being worse than expected: the $30 million number was a projection created last year, and economic conditions right now are quite a bit different than they were a year ago. PERS, Oregon's pension system, has higher rates. Health insurance costs are quite a bit higher. There's quite a few things that are more expensive. Staffing numbers may also have been a little off. They're still crunching the numbers, and we won't know for a couple of weeks what the additional cuts will look like, so there could be more pain.
Dunne: Can we assume there are going to be some fairly significant cuts to teachers, administration and that sort of thing?
Hansen-White: Yes. The district knew it was going to be bad, and so they started the budget process early, putting out information and meeting with people since the start of the year, even going back to December. What they did was ask the school board, well in advance, for authorization to start the process of identifying jobs that could be cut, programs that could be scaled back or eliminated and technology cuts that could be made. They've already authorized the elimination of 269 jobs, and they had hoped not to have to eliminate all of those jobs. But with this new number, it looks like they will have to eliminate every single one of those 269 positions. What the school district has said this week and last week is that they are hoping they will not have to go above those 269 jobs, that they'll be able to move some funds around and do some temporary things to avoid going beyond that already-authorized cut number. But we still don't actually know the full picture of what any new reductions will look like.
Dunne: These reductions would land next school year. Is that how it works?
Hansen-White: Yes. There is not a mid-year cut happening. This is all planning for next school year's budget. We would get through the end of the school year, the end of the fiscal year, which is the end of June, and these would take effect in July.
Dunne: You've spoken with the fairly new superintendent, Superintendent Nicholson. What have they said, especially in light of this announcement? I know they've talked about trying to be as transparent as possible.
Hansen-White: She's put out a couple of statements, trying to make it clear how serious this is. They have been fairly transparent. I've seen that in how they've held all of these meetings and released the cuts in three phases, step by step. I think with this latest development, she has acknowledged it is quite discouraging to go through all of that work to get to a $30 million figure and then find out that it's still not enough.
Dunne: So, what is sacred? What is not on the table right now?
Hansen-White: Right now, they are not considering closing any schools. That is something other school districts have had to do, and it is not on the table right now for 4J. The other thing that is not going to change: one of the previously approved budget cuts was a change to middle school schedules, and they are not looking at any other schedule changes for next school year beyond that one. So those are two things that will not change this coming school year. I don't know if that will be true in the next budget cycle or in future years, but right now, 4J is not considering closing any schools or making any additional schedule restructuring.
Dunne: So what's next?
Hansen-White: The next budget meeting is April 8, and they're going to possibly present the actual budgets at those first couple of April meetings. April 8 is when people should watch for what happens next.
Dunne: Rebecca Hansen-White, always appreciate you giving us the 411 on what's going on at 4J. Thanks so much.
Hansen-White: Thank you.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, an Oregon State University researcher tells us about a new study which resets our understanding of our warming planet from 3 million years ago. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
