{"id":1334,"date":"2013-01-27T13:04:18","date_gmt":"2013-01-27T18:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=1334"},"modified":"2013-01-28T09:36:42","modified_gmt":"2013-01-28T14:36:42","slug":"dances-galore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2013\/01\/dances-galore\/","title":{"rendered":"Dances Galore"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"David<\/a>

David Parsons’s Dawn to Dusk<\/em>. (L to R) Eric Bourne, Steven Vaughn, Elena D’Amario, Melissa Ullom, Abby Silva Gavezzoli. Photo: Eric Bandiero<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s hardly fair to David Parsons to see one of his company\u2019s performances at the Joyce the night after the New York City Ballet\u2019s first all-Tchaikovsky program of the season. Wednesday, Balanchine\u2019s Mozartiana<\/i>, Thursday, Parsons\u2019s Wolfgang. <\/i>The company that Parsons founded in 1987 is wildly popular with audiences. He gives them a lot: lively, accomplished dancers; eye-catching lighting (by Howell Binkley) and costumes; variety in terms of subject matter and mood. His movement style, which owes something to his own years as a major dancer in Paul Taylor\u2019s company, is robust, buoyant, and informal in manner (although it can be stark and grotesque when that\u2019s called for). He knows how to structure a piece and pattern its space effectively.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Wolfgang<\/i> (2005) embodies most of the above. But in terms of musicality, it often rubs up against the Mozart symphonic music it\u2019s set to. For one thing the volume is turned up to rock-concert levels, and the dense-with-steps choreography acknowledges mostly the meter of the music, its climaxes, endings, and new beginnings. Parsons seldom develops phrases in terms of a whole, especially in the fast sections; nor does he always sense the music\u2019s qualities or let it breathe. At one moment, Mozart\u2019s melody rises in pitch, becomes lighter, suspends. And what does Parsons have a dancer do on that topmost sigh?\u00a0 A high kick.<\/p>\n

His newest work, Dawn to Dusk<\/i>, is a color-saturated vision of Florida\u2019s watery landscape. What the company showed at the Joyce is excerpted from a longer work, Face of America: Spirit of South Florida<\/i>, which was commissioned by Wolf Trap as part of its \u201cFace of America\u201d series. This series sponsors site-specific choreography in the country\u2019s national parks (Barbara Parker of the Wolftrap Foundation for the Performing Arts is listed as Parsons\u2019s choreographic collaborator). The dancers appear on the stage and on screen. They aren\u2019t the only performers. In magnificently clear videos by Blue Land Media and the still photos by Clyde Butcher, snakes twine and flick their tongues, alligators lumber, birds fly across the screen that fills the stage\u2019s backdrop, and a wading bird sticks its long beak into the water. Three pieces of music by Andrew Bird seem appropriate.<\/p>\n

\"(Bourne,<\/a>

Bourne, Vaughn, D’Amario, Ullom, Silva Gavezzoli, and friend. Photo: Eric Bandiero<\/p><\/div>\n

Early on, Parsons establishes a connection between the filmed images and the dancers. In footage filmed in the Everglades, an immense alligator slithers along, and onstage, Abby Silva Gavezzoli backs away from it. Then Gavezzoli herself drops to all fours and, briefly, becomes a swamp creature. Later several dancers move along linked together in a sinuous chain like a gator\u2019s tail. We see performers up to their thighs in water: Steven Vaughn, crouches, arms spread, wary as a bird. When wind surges across a landscape of grass and palm trees, the dancers (there are eight in all) roll around the stage.<\/p>\n

Some of the dancing catches your eye\u2014Eric Bourne, for instance, moving his hands in sinuous ways. A woman (I forget which) is lifted by the men and swirled in a swan dive position. But the projections overwhelm the live action. The images are so large, so primal that you forget to watch what\u2019s happening in three dimensions right in front of you. And dancers performing synchronized movements while standing in a swamp look out of place.<\/p>\n

Dawn to Dusk<\/i>. How to show that, when the natural light is fading? Here Parsons\u2019s vision takes a strange turn. Suddenly we\u2019re in a Miami hot spot having an evening on the town, and the music is Tiempo Libre\u2019s \u201cVen Pa Miami.\u201d\u00a0 This is uncomfortably like a scene in a travelogue, but it must be that Parsons sees it as another way to connect animal life with the human species. The gambit doesn\u2019t quite work, even though it\u2019s a pleasure to watch Elena D\u2019Amario party with her pals: Melissa Ullom, Christina Ilisije, Jason MacDonald, Ian Spring, and those already mentioned). Gavezzoli dropping again to all fours just before the lights go out doesn\u2019t quite get the message about our bond with nature across<\/p>\n

\"(L<\/a>

(L to R): Christine Ilisije, Lauren Garson, Melissa Ullom in Katarzyna Scarpetowska’s Black Flowers<\/em>. Photo: Eric Bandiero<\/p><\/div>\n

Katarzyna Scarpetowska, who used to be a member of Parsons Dance and has already choreographed a piece for the company, offered a new work during the Joyce season. Titled Black Flowers<\/i>, it\u2019s set to two Etudes and two Preludes by Chopin (Scarpetowska is Polish by birth).\u00a0But Scarpetowska makes you aware of the music primarily in terms of the lyrical, sometimes mournful, sometimes turbulent moods it sets; she doesn\u2019t always breathe with her compatriot.<\/p>\n

Her opening is intriguing, three women and two men, wearing black clothes (costumes by Reid Barthelme), stand with their backs to the audience. Slowly, dreamily, they thread their way around one another, never turning their faces to us. The image is almost tidal. In a brief video interview, Scarpetowska said that she thought of the men as part of the women\u2019s memories. That\u2019s not obvious in the choreography, but we do see these people wandering, the women reaching out to touch what isn\u2019t quite there, yet nurturing the men. There is a duet by Bourne and Lauren Garson, after which Garson lashes herself wildly around. MacDonald and Ullom dance together more quietly. At one moment Vaughn jams his head against Ilisije\u2019s belly as if he\u2019s trying to burrow into her.<\/p>\n

\"Jason<\/a>

Jason MacDonald (L) and Eric Bourne in Black Flowers<\/em>. Photo: Eric Bandiero<\/p><\/div>\n

If the men are remembered lovers, it\u2019s strange to see them without the women: Vaughn in a solo; MacDonald frozen in a lunge, while Bourne stands on the calf of his friend\u2019s leg, as if to see better into the distance.<\/p>\n

Parsons Dance offers its audiences a hearty meal of dancing. It\u2019s a lot to try and digest. The program includes his famous solo, Caught<\/i>, danced at this performance by Bourne, and the vigorously frisky, flashy, sexy finale, In The End. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hardly fair to David Parsons to see one of his company\u2019s performances at the Joyce the night after the New York City Ballet\u2019s first all-Tchaikovsky program of the season. Wednesday, Balanchine\u2019s Mozartiana, Thursday, Parsons\u2019s Wolfgang. The company that Parsons founded in 1987 is wildly popular with audiences. He gives them a lot: lively, accomplished […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[604,601,603,602],"class_list":{"0":"post-1334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-dance","8":"tag-black-flowers","9":"tag-david-parsons","10":"tag-dawn-to-dusk","11":"tag-katarzyna-scarpetowska","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}