December 19, 2000 of exuberant, athletic, provocative dance at UCSB Summary Facts:
Lauded by both critics and audiences for athletic, exuberant and provocative dances, the Parsons Dance Company returns to UCSB in two performances of signature works by artistic director David Parsons on Wednesday and Thursday, January 24 and 25 at 8 p.m. in UCSB Campbell Hall. Parsons has been credited with demystifying modern dance and dropping it playfully in the laps of wildly appreciative popular audiences worldwide. He received a 2000 Dance Magazine Award for capturing “the imagination of a public hungry not just for entertainment, but for imagination, beauty, innovation and enlightenment.” The company’s Santa Barbara performances open with a work called Closure set to stylish, percussive music commissioned from Tony Powell, a 1995 graduate of the Juilliard School. The choreography expands and contracts in front of a line of dazzling floor lights that glow bright gold in patterns and intensity that change in time to the music. Four couples of black-clad dancers evoke love and anger in varying groupings while criss-crossing the stage with spins, and syncopated trots and canters. Lighting design for this and most of Parsons’ work is by company co-founder Howell Binkley. Seven pajama-clad dancers perform Sleep Study, from 1987, a charming, dreamy, humorous exploration of the movement that occurs when sleepers unconsciously become dancers themselves This affable piece is set to music by Flim and the BBs. Two works by company member Robert Battle close the first half of the program. Battle’s choreography, increasingly performed by Parsons’ company in repertory programs, is kinetic and quirky. Strange Humors, set to an original score by John Mackey, sets up an inventive competition featuring karate kicks, sudden falls onto the back and high springs in the air between two men in chic orange pants by the award-winning fashion designer Missoni. Rush Hour, also set to music by Mackey, is an ironic ensemble piece that reveals a wild nature behind its characters’ facades. Parsons’ sculptural work Union follows the intermission. This contemplative piece in which nine dancers confine themselves to center stage for a series of languorous lifts and combinations is performed in costumes designed by Donna Karan. Although Union was originally set to music by Grammy Award-winning classical composer John Corigliano, it has also been performed to scores by Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter. For the UCSB performances, it will be danced to Corigliano’s score. Parsons’ surprising and endlessly appealing trademark work Caught, set to an eerie score by Robert Fripp, features a single dancer who—thanks to split-second timing, remarkable stamina and a strobe light—appears to walk breezily through midair. The programs close with Parsons’ work Mood Swing, an examination of depression in a fast-paced world, buoyed by comic flourishes and lusciously melting movement, performed to the blues-tinged clarinet music of Morton Gould’s Benny’s Gig. Comprised of 11 full-time dancers performing a repertory of more than 50 works, the Parsons Dance Company was founded in 1987, when David Parsons left the Paul Taylor Dance Company to strike out on his own after having been one of Taylor’s star dancers for ten years. The company’s mission is to make modern dance accessible to the widest possible audience throughout the world. With dances The New York Times calls “bright, likable and accomplished,” Parsons and his troupe have been a resounding success at achieving their goal. The only company to have performed at all three of Italy’s Spoleto Festivals in the same year, it has appeared at some of the world’s most prestigious dance venues. The company is on tour more than 40 weeks a year and performs an annual season in New York City, where it is based. The company performed in Manhattan on New Year’s Eve, under Parsons’ artistic direction, for Times Square 2000, the 24-hour marathon that celebrated the turning of the millennium. David Parsons is considered to be one of the most enduringly successful choreographers of his generation, having kept his company operating in the black despite starting it just as federal funding for the arts began to be seriously cut back in the late 1980s. He has choreographed works for the Paul Taylor Dance Company, American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet and National Ballet of Canada. His dances have been performed by the Paris Opera Ballet, Feld Ballets/NY and BatSheva Dance Company of Israel. In 1997, Parsons was one of only six choreographers in the nation chosen by the American Dance Festival to create a new work for The Millennium Project. He is the first and only artist to have been featured twice as “artist of the week” by A&E television network’s Breakfast with the Arts. Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures, this event is sponsored by KRUZ, 103.3 FM and the Santa Barbara News-Press, and is supported in part with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and the California Arts Council, a state agency. For tickets or more information, Editor: For photos, please call |