Parsons Dance: Spring 2025 Season

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Parsons Dance, the artistic child of David Parsons, returned to The Joyce Theater, its home base in New York City, in fine fettle, a gorgeous troupe of dancers with razor sharp technique and personality to spare.

Six quite diverse works made up the program, four by Parsons and two by guest artists (Robert Battle and Rita Butler) who pushed the dancers to their limits. The guest choreographers worked the company in ways that challenged them after being used to Parsons’ style, which is a witty combination of ballet and modern dance, most particularly the modern dance exemplified by the late Paul Taylor with whom Parsons notably danced for a number of years.

Parsons skillfully managed to choreograph such diverse works as the breezy, genteel “Wolfgang” and the gimmicky, but exciting, “Caught,” both on this program, each illustrating his imaginative use of movement and music (helped, of course, by his lighting and costume designers).

“Wolfgang” took six dancers on a swiftly moving, flirty trip through  Mozart’s jaunty score, wearing David Murin’s costumes that suggested 18^th century, abbreviated as if he ran out of material, just short fancy skirts and flashy vests.

The six dancers moved singly at first across the stage, soon forming breezy duos full of buoyant partnering.  Each subsequent section featured a soloist, soon absorbed back into the group.  Men were featured and then women, but always coalescing back into a joyful microcosm of very balletic movements.  (The work was created for the Aspen Santa Fe ballet in 2005.)

Howell Binkley’s lighting accented the effervescence of the steps.

The world premiere, “Her Gifts,” was Parsons’ homage to his longtime company member Zoey Anderson, staged to Roberta Flack’s rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”  Very much like “Cry,” Alvin Ailey’s tribute to his muse Judith Jamison, “Her Gifts” featured all of Anderson’s multiple talents: her strength, flexibility, dramatic presence and beautiful form, exposed by Norma Kamali’s torso baring outfit.

Standing dead center, Anderson, dramatically lit by Christopher Chambers, started with upper body movements, reaching, twisting and glancing heavenward, soon moving around in soft jumps and some startling classical ballet fouettés, tossing them off enjoying her total control.  She managed to float on the tender song with Parsons’ movements, her personality filling the Joyce stage.

Anderson also performed Parsons’ signature work, “Caught” in which artfully utilized strobe lights made her appear to be floating in the air.  (The clever lighting was by Parsons and Binkley.) She was, at least to my eyes, the best interpreter of this part since Parsons himself.

To add to her achievements, right after her exhausting interpretation of “Caught,” she rushed in to join the cast for the final work of the evening, Parsons’ jaunty “In the End” constructed around the pop/rock music of Dave Mathews Band.  “In the End,” from 2005, was whimsical, its technical demands totally hidden by the playful performances by the dancers.

Of the two works by the guest dance makers, “The Hunt” by Robert Battle, former artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, was the more exciting.  Four women—Téa Pérez, Megan Garcia Ziminski, Justine Delius and the ubiquitous Anderson who alternated with an all-male cast—in dramatically colored flowing costumes by Mia McSwain, were a quartet of Amazons in the best sense of that word:  strong, beautiful and tribal.  As they pounded the stage with their feet and slashed the air with their arms, the powerful percussion score by Les Tambours du Bronx plus the dramatically stark lighting by Burke J. Wilmore.  “The Hunt” was a hit.

Rena Butler’s jangly “Sheep’s Gothic” was another premiere, choreographed to Darryl J. Hoffman’s very mixed and equally jangly score which quoted everything from church choir music to jazz and even Mendelssohn, sometimes competing with each other.  The dancers bumped into each other, launched jumps using each other and slid about the floor in contorted positions.  The total effect was being in the presence of a cultish group of people whose force of gravity barely kept them together.  It was odd, demanding to dance and view, but entertaining enhanced by the costumes of Asha Ama and the rich lighting of Christopher Chambers.

Parsons Dance is in top form in every way: choreography, costumes and lighting and, last but not least, in the incredible dancing.

Parsons Dance (through May 24, 2025)

The Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-242-0800 or visit http://www.Joyce.org

Running time: one hour and 45 minutes including one intermission