On April 26, 1937, the Nazi air force attacked the Spanish city of Guernica. For more than three hours, Germany's best-equipped bombers threw 100,000 pounds of high-explosive bombs onto the small village, slaughtering approximately 2,000 townspeople and country peasants. The complete obliteration of the city shocked the world as the first demonstration of modern bombing techniques on a civilian target.

Teresa Marcaida and Drew Sandbulte rehearse a duet between the Mother and Death. Photo by Joseph James Simeone

By May 1, 1937, eyewitness reports of the massacre covered the front pages of Parisian papers. There were many horrific accounts, like that of Juan Silliaco, who stated: "The air was alive with the cries of the wounded. I saw a man crawling down the street, dragging his broken legs ... In the wreckage there was a young woman. I could not take my eyes off her. Bones stuck through her dress. Her head twisted right around her neck. She lay, mouth open, her tongue hanging out. I vomited and lost consciousness." More than a million protesters flooded the streets to voice their outrage in the largest May Day demonstration Paris had ever seen. The painter Pablo Picasso, stunned by the stark black-and-white photographs, rushed through the crowded streets to his studio, where he quickly sketched the first images for the mural he would call Guernica. Now, 66 years to the day, five members of the Juilliard Dance Ensemble will present a new interpretation of the terror felt in Spain and around the world in 1937.

I have spent the past few months choreographing Guernica--A Dance of the Commedia Dell'Arte in an effort to examine how the modern world has assimilated the message expressed in Picasso's work. As some in the Juilliard community are aware, as well as being a dancer, I am a visual artist. My paintings have won awards and have been shown in museums and galleries including the Corcoran Museum in Washington and the John McEnroe Gallery in SoHo. I was able to use this knowledge, as well as my time crafting marionettes and hand-rod puppets under the guidance of the Jim Henson Production Company, to translate Picasso's bold style into my choreography. Explicit depiction of such violence, as painted in Guernica, calls for little interpretation by the viewer ... a severed head speaks for itself! And while these images are representations of a greater message, including hope for human life, pain and brutality clearly emerge as the overall theme of the work.

Kathryn Sydell, Kyra Green, Sandbulte, and Marcaida explore the structure of Studio 305. Photo by Joseph James Simeone

The subtitle of my piece--A Dance of the Commedia Dell'Arte--really spells out the twisting point of my Guernica, the point where it departs from Picasso's interpretation. I would have originally envisioned an oppressive evening of solos and duets, but quickly realized that an hour of absolute despair, besides being torture to sit through, had nothing to do with Picasso's work. There is a greater learning to be had from the brush strokes of Guernica than just pure witness to brutality. The duality of the work is key. Yes, the theme is violence, but its power is how the painted cruelty makes the canvas scream for peace. The messenger is violence, but the message is completely different. That is the foundation of this work, and the twist, the duality, that is why I have chosen to make my Guernica a comedy.

My longtime friend Fay E. VanDyke, a professor of fine arts at Wesleyan University with whom I once studied, helped me sort out some of the creative issues with which I grappled while working out the choreography. When I informed her of my plan to create a comedic dance performance based on Picasso's Guernica, we began discussing the themes imbued in this great work. "We examined the artistic techniques Picasso used to control the elements of composition structure in order to visually communicate a sense of dissonance between the forces of man and nature," she explains.

I try to carry this struggle into the dance by merging the characters Picasso painted with the traits that I was able to provide them in movement. The idea was to create a schism of two contradictory parts, black humor and truth.

Guernica--A Dance of the Commedia Dell'Arte Studio 305 Saturday, April 26, 8 p.m. Sunday, April 27, 2 p.m. An extremely limited number of tickets will be available in the Juilliard Box Office beginning April 14. Juilliard ID required.

In Picasso's mural, a Harlequin, frequently used by the painter as a symbol of death, is hidden amongst the black and gray angles of the painting. The Harlequin returns in the dance to lead Picasso's characters (such as the severed swordsman, the bull, the candle bearer, etc.), who here appear as simple street performers in a Commedia dell'Arte troupe. I chose to give these characters a callous, cartoon-like outlook on the truly grim world around them. Arms fly, explosions reign, puppets devour puppets, and colorful carts disfigure Shih Tzus, but all the while these masked zanies are unaware of the hysterical madness they cause. Yet while most of this wild troupe ignore or cannot feel the pain inflicted upon them, I have set a more genuine human into the mix, and that is where all the work's conflict resides. Picasso painted a mother, with screaming tongue to the sky and head thrown back in sorrow for her broken baby. She is the only display of remorse in the painting. I began to wonder, "What would happen if she was placed in this world of blush and bedlam exactly as Picasso painted, as the only one who shows an understanding of true misery? What would she do? How would the others react to her? Would she, could she survive?" In the dance, this unmasked, misfortuned woman plays out the answers to these questions as she is thrust amid the chaos and the clowns.

Among those causing the evening's uproarious antics are Dance Division third-year students Jubal Battisti, Kathryn Sydell, and Kyra Green, along with second-year dancers Drew Sandbulte and Teresa Marcaida and others. As the show draws closer, I have become increasingly worried about making such a bold statement with movement; dance is an art that leaves much to the viewer's individual interpretation. Drew, who portrays the Harlequin (Death), says that "Joe's Guernica lives with a festering dark humor, and calls into the open how many people have come to feel about war and each other." With war once again filling the front pages of the news, this piece is particularly timely. I trust that the style of my work will allow the audience to enjoy watching this chaotic merriment, but later realize the truth behind the laughter.

Joseph James Simeone is a third-year dance student.