American singer-songwriter Perfume Genius (real name: Mike Hadreas) is known as a creator of adventurous baroque pop with vulnerable lyrics. However, this versatile artist is also a dancer, a skill that comes to the fore in his new show The Lesson, a dance/music performance based on the novel Die Klavierspielerin (1983) by Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek. In the book (successfully adapted into the film The Piano Teacher), a piano teacher who suppresses all her emotions and sexual desires begins a sadomasochistic relationship with one of her students. The Lesson explores the consequences of that repression, to the point where what is left unsaid eventually manifests physically.
