Pavel Zustiak's "Painted Bird" Blurs Insiders and Outsiders Ruby Washington/The New York Times The Painted Bird From left, Denisa Musilova, Giulia Carotenuto, Jaro Vinarsky, Jeremy Xido and Nick Bruder in "Strange Cargo" at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theater. Over the past three years, it has been possible to experience "The Painted Bird," an ambitious trilogy of dance theater works by Pavel Zustiak, only in installments, one per year. But last week at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theater, you could take in all three parts in one long evening as part of the La MaMa Moves! festival. That's what I did on Saturday. The trilogy borrows its title and many of its themes from Jerzy Kosinski's 1965 novel about a boy wandering through Europe during World War II. Among the awful things the boy sees is a painted bird, released back into its flock, being ripped apart because it is perceived as foreign. This image does not appear in Mr. Zustiak's work, but the sense of threat is ever-present. The first piece, "Bastard," is closest to the novel - a harrowing journey for an outcast - and is performed mostly as a solo by Jaro Vinarsky. But at the end of "Bastard," Mr. Vinarsky is one among many, caught up in the leaderless group behavior of an anonymous crowd. In the trilogy's second part, "Amidst," the audience becomes the crowd, wandering through the haze-filled theater, herded by the transit of three dancers. And in the final "Strange Cargo," spectators sit on facing sides of the stage watching a pack of five performers. The instability of outsider and insider is the trilogy's strongest through line. Its most common action is people looking at other people. Again and again, interchangeability is enacted, as sequences are repeated with the roles of perpetrator and victim swapped. Yet the work continually draws attention to particular individuals, particular faces, either with a literal spotlight or through stillness amid motion. The interaction between individual and group is paralleled on the production level. Mr. Zustiak draws intense performances from his dancers, above all Mr. Vinarsky, whose searing vulnerability helps make "Bastard" the most effective segment. Joe Levasseur's lighting is bold and imaginative, an active participant. And the composer Christian Frederickson, playing a stew of ominous hums and buzzes, viola melodies and rock backbeats, is an outsider with greater influence than any other performer. But despite many powerful moments, the overall effect of "The Painted Bird" is of a profusion of ideas that don't cohere. Especially in the episodic "Strange Cargo," Mr. Zustiak stuffs too much in; yet trilogywide, his use of repetition can make the work feel attenuated, stretched to fill time. The incoherence is especially problematic considering the subject matter. In "Bastard," textual descriptions of rape and murder scroll rapidly in projection, and ugly slurs are sung. In "Amidst," the word "atrocity" appears in lights. In "Strange Cargo," violence is explicit and Kosinski's real suicide note is baldly presented. There are suggestions of mass graves, rock-throwing rioters, Nazis. In stringing all of this potent material together, Mr. Zustiak is presumably aiming at universal truths, timeless patterns of history. But in handling "atrocity" in general terms, he treads close to exploitative sensationalism. The performers in "Painted Bird" often point fingers at the audience, invoking a complicity that should come as a surprise to no one. We're meant to see ourselves in the work's many mirrors. Yes, we're all perpetrators, all victims, all insiders, all outsiders. But material this freighted demands deeper insight and a firmer authorial hand.