by Leigh Witchel
Parsons Dance’s repertory is filled with pithy works that go down easy, have great dancing and cater to a video-length attention span. It’s a shame he doesn’t do more on Youtube. Instead, the company returned to the Joyce for a two week season, bringing some classics and some new works, not all by Parsons.
Like most of the pieces in repertory, Matthew Neenan’s “Past Tense” is an ingratiating work aiming to please. But it was also a conceptual notch above the usual for the company.
The piece was set to Pietro Locatelli’s baroque virtuoso showpieces for violin; Christine Darch designed sexy pirate attire for the cast of four men and four women. The opening section brought the dancers in one by one, making “Past Tense” a natural opener for the audience to meet the company.
The dancers began stalking slowly in counterpoint to Zoey Anderson’s sharply attacked woman’s solo. When she finished, Henry Steele took over. “Past Tense” was packed with vocabulary at a breathless rush, well-wrought, and technical. Steele cracked out a double tour with his leg in cou-de-pied.
For a pocket-sized company, there’s a pecking order at Parsons. Anderson and Steel, along with Croix Dilenno and Deirdre Rogan, got the lion’s share of meaty parts, and they made as strong a case as possible for some company members being more equal than others.
A slower movement didn’t slow down the pace, with more duets done at a rush and tumble, and a brief interlude to eerie sawing strings. Steele and Anderson had a virtuoso dance, joined by Dilenno to form a trio. The work’s ending was a surprise but still managed to feel like an ending.
If “Past Tense” was craft, it was good craft, and even ingenious craft when Neenan dismantled that trio to become a dance for just Steele and Dilenno.
The next solo, “Balance of Power,” made by Parsons last year, was a calculated crowdpleaser, aiming to outcatch “Caught.” Set to a percussion solo by Giancarlo De Trizio, played by Pablo Eluchans, it was danced by Anderson, who alternated it with Dilenno. From an opening handstand, it moved into Nijinsky faun-like poses and plastique. It felt almost archaic at first in contrast to the slamming drums. But then the solo swung into virtuosity as Anderson spun into multiple turns. Then, WHAM! Salsa!
Parsons built a note-for-step interpretation of every lick of the drum solo and Anderson nailed it with glossy confidence, including turns with her leg à la seconde, turning the piece into an advertisement for her skill. The short dance ended with a repeat of a raised fist. That seemed more like showmanship than politics.
Another new work, Chanel DaSilva’s “On The Other Side,” was set to a live piano and marimba score by Cristina Spinei. It started with the dancers laying down tape on the floor and marking off boxes. They stayed inside them, swaying, then shifted weight from one side to the other. The group worked in tight unison, except Rogan at the front corner, who came to center as the others jogged and writhed on the floor, before crawling offstage. Rogan danced from box to box.
DaSilva made a good male duet that didn’t make a big deal out of being a dance for two men, even as it ended daringly with one man jumping at the other and arching his back round before being carried off. A solo for Rogan became fraught. She spun in attitude, pounded her chest and actually did a Marcel Marceau miming-a-wall shtick. In the final movement everyone danced, then lifted Rogan but suddenly Steele appeared. The two embraced as the lights went out. Yes, the solution to lockdown is a man. But that, and the hamfisted lockdown metaphors, were more in line with the company’s repertory than ambiguity.
The evening closed with a piece Parsons choreographed this year. “The Road” is a jukebox dance, this time to songs by Yusuf/Cat Stevens, with the dancers dressed in flower children outfits, striped shirts and tights. And like a jukebox, it could have easily been shuffled to any order with no real change in effect.
For “Oh Very Young” Anderson was carried and tossed into the air by all the men. The virtuosity and manipulations didn’t square with the innocence in the song, but there was a gorgeous moment when she jumped into Dilenno bang on the note in “Trouble.”
“Peace Train” had to be the finale and it was, in a sugary remake where Yusuf spoke a section as if he were Elvis during “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” “The Road” was about as Parsons as Parsons can be: an equal mix of competence and cloying, in a feel-good dance where everyone shook their hips and sold it as hard as possible. Nowhere did the company look more like competition dancers.
The program also offered Parsons’ Greatest Hits, and they’re a lot better.
“Caught,” a solo done in stop action via strobe lights is now 39 years old and still works. Steele danced it with an almost baroque line to start. As he moved from light to light before the main section, it felt like a dialogue on plastique. But then there’s that one brilliant gimmick. It may be frustrating because it just ends by cutting the music when Parsons ran out of ideas, but what a shtick.
“The Envelope” is 37 years old, and it’s still going because it’s built tough as nails. Lesson #1: It almost doesn’t matter what else you do; if you pace it right, chances are the rest of the dance will work. Lesson #2: If you were ever confused about the concept of a MacGuffin, watch this dance. The whole work cruises along on the concept of an envelope that gets tossed away – and reappears almost immediately from unexpected but goofy trajectories. What’s in it? Who knows. Who cares.
Parsons set this all to Rossini chestnuts, including the overture to “The Barber of Seville” as a finale, which means he was competing against Bugs Bunny. He didn’t lose. You could also see how much he owed to his old boss, Paul Taylor. Parsons’ vocabulary comes from Taylor’s, but he also adopted Taylor’s meshuga humor.
Steele came out, skipping in emboîtés, then headed into a Charleston. The entire cast was dressed alike; black-clad mercenaries incognito in dark shades. They all dorked about doing contractions – think Taylor’s skulking villains. Dilenno, standing on a thin red carpet that got rolled on from the side, accepted adulation, then got pulled off. Someone else howled a few notes to the Rossini as an opera joke. None of it has any logic, but none of it needs to because the timing was right.
The more meaningful Parsons Dance tries to be, and the longer the pieces, the more rough going it is. This is a short-form company with solid craft, great dancers . . . everything but bite.
copyright © 2021 by Leigh Witchel
“Past Tense,” “Balance of Power,” “On the Other Side,” “The Envelope,” “Caught,” “The Road”– Parsons Dance
The Joyce Theater, New York, NY
December 6, 2021
Cover: DaMond LeMonte Garner and Eric Bourne in “Past Tense.” Photo credit © Steven Pisano.
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