Parsons Dance Company. - Joyce Theater, New York, New York - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1996 by Anne Tobias

MAY 21-JUNE 2, 1996 REVIEWED BY ANNE TOBIAS

A companion, having just witnessed one of the two programs offered by the Parsons Dance Company this season, uttered this succinct summation: "Well, I guess you don't go to see David Parsons to have an epiphany." I couldn't have said it better myself. Apparently, today's audiences aren't in the market for an epiphany. Those who crowded in to see this troupe expressed their avid delight with thunderous applause and delirious screams. Parsons is clearly giving them just what they want: nonstop athletic movement, glamorous images, and not a whole lot to think about.

Performed every night during this run, Caught, the choreographer's showstopping signature solo, reveals everything Parsons is about. A strobe light freezes the soloist midair, so that the dancer appears to be defying gravity, walking, skipping, and leaping through space without ever pushing off from the ground. The effect is astonishing (and quite taxing for the performer). Six minutes long, Caught is a brilliant one-liner.

The season's newest work, Pass the Oil, Please, also operates in a single gear. Two real-live masseuses poke and knead and pull at two ragdoll-limp dancers. It's one of those duet-duels executed on the beat to what the program terms "Bachelor Pad Music" ("I'm in the Mood for Love" and the like). There are many cheap gags--loud neck-cracking sounds, for instance, and I'll 1et you imagine the rest. A little sophomoric maybe, but, hey, people laughed.

Parsons runs into trouble when he must sustain a dance that employs more people onstage for a longer period of time. Suddenly the need for substance and structure rears its ugly head. And this the choreographer can't quite bring off. For many of the pieces, the title alone figures for substance. In The Rush, a New York premiere, movement skitters along at a hectic pace. In Mood Swing, the dancers lurch, often audibly, from laughter to lethargy, excitement to anger. In Scrutiny--you guessed it--people stare daggers at each other. What's missing are metaphor, layering, subtlety, subtext, and, most important, development of the initial idea. Atmosphere does not equal an idea.

Nor is repetition of a movement motif equal to structure. Yet Parsons often resorts to this as a means to making a piece cohere. I also found much of the stage patterning predictable in the larger group works, as if Parsons had learned the methods of troop deployment from a book. An exception is the first section of Touched by Time, in which massings of the dancers--first linear, then tangled, then taking up the linear journey once more--have their own organic logic.

In his very successful career as a performer, notable for a nine-year tenure with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Parsons demonstrated the depths of his understanding of the art form. His dancing intelligence is great, partly for the sheer magnitude and generosity of his movement and partly for its precision and clarity. Watching him onstage is still a joy and a wonder. The difficulty seems to be how to relate all that physical knowledge, to say nothing of what he must have learned about craft under master choreographer Taylor, to his own dancemaking.

Parsons has translated many of his personal gifts directly to his dancers, if not his dances. They are an able, pleasing bunch, with Patricia Kenny a particular standout. They tear after the choreography with hungry vigor, giving it everything they've got. But that's just not enough.