"Wolfgang,""Black Flowers,""Dawn to Dusk,""Caught,""In the End"
Parsons Dance
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
January 20, 2013
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2013 by Martha Sherman
David Parsons’ crowd-pleasing style hasn’t developed much since the 1980s, but he and his dancers still deliver a show rooted in joy and athletic energy. Their five-work program at the Joyce traced those qualities from Parsons’ 1982 signature solo “Caught,” to the present. The centerpiece was the New York premiere of “Dawn to Dusk,” Parsons’ inventive film and dance travelogue. An excerpt of his 2012 homage to the Everglades and South Florida, most of the piece was a visually compelling (if somewhat confusing) wander through gorgeous marshland, but disappointed when it closed as a thinly disguised commercial for Miami nightlife.
The work opened with a lush, stage-sized film of the swamps and wildlife. As a crocodile slithered through a waterway on film, Abby Silva Gavezzoli slithered on stage, as if barely out of the animal’s reach, drawing the wending line of his path. The rest of the troupe followed onstage, and their dance movements echoed the natural rhythms and movements, including birds’ swooping wings and idiosyncratic twitches. Intertwined with the wildlife, the dancers also popped up in the film itself, including Elena D’Amario and Lauren Garson gliding through the swamp, and a frog-like Steven Vaughn looming out of the rushes, but the dancers on the huge screen overwhelmed the live performers, who seemed oddly transformed into their own shadows.
The piece closed in rushing, watery-filmed Miami Beach night scenes, to the Latin beat of Tiempo Libre’s “Ven Pa Miami.” Not only did the film suffer from the shift, but the dancing turned into a not very good nightclub act, Latin pairs dancing with a couple of lifts thrown in. The compelling, exotic marsh world sank like a stone and disappeared.
“Black Flowers,” was the evening's world premiere, the second commission for the company by former Parsons dancer, Katarzyna Skarpetowska. Danced to Chopin piano pieces, it was darker and more muddled than the evening’s other works. Six dancers opened, with their backs facing the audience, silently sliding in small steps. Each of the three women separated themselves, briefly, from the crowd to dance a tortured solo, arms stretched out in yearning, or in a frenzy of prayer.
The premieres were packed alongside three popular repertory pieces. After 30 years, “Caught” is still an entertaining and impressive dancing tour de force. All of Parsons’ lead male dancers are rotated in this role; on Sunday night, Ian Spring confidently danced the exciting strobe-lit action scenes. His perfectly timed jumps matched the lights' rhythms, with the illusion of walking on air. Three decades later, the trick is well known enough to be hackneyed; but it's still a deserving highlight of Parsons’ repertory.
The evening’s opening and closing pieces, “Wolfgang” and “In the End,” were suitable (if safe) bookends for the evening. An energized opener danced to Mozart introduced many of Parsons’ most familiar themes; it was paired with an equally bright closer, danced to Dave Matthews Band tunes. Both showed off the dancers’ ballet discipline (and Parsons’ Paul Taylor heritage), and added bursts of angled and swiveling bodies, punctuated by thrusting arms and big smiles. It’s hard to argue with the exuberance that lights Parsons’ choreography and his dancers’ skills. It hasn’t changed much over time, but it still charms his appreciative audience.
copyright © 2013 by Martha Sherman
Photos by Eric Bandiero
Top: Parsons Dance Company in “Dusk to Dawn”
Bottom: Jason MacDonald and Eric Bourne in “Black Flowers