This week, David Parsons’ company Parsons Dance is performing in the Ted Shawn Theatre at Jacob’s Pillow. In the late 1970s, Parsons catapulted onto the New York modern dance scene as a dancer when he joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company . He then just skyrocketed to fame as a choreographer when he formed Parsons Dance with lighting designer Howell Binkley.
And, of course, that made sense. In the first place, Parsons was a profoundly gifted dancer, so it was natural that he would be able to generate beautiful movement in his body and then extract it and put it on a stage. In the second place, as a member of the Taylor Company for nine years, he presumably learned from the ground up how to create and construct a dance—and, critically, how to take the vision you have in your head and put it on dancers—from one of the all-time masters of modern dance choreography, Paul Taylor.
The program Parsons has brought to the Pillow represents work he has made over the past 40-plus years, including perhaps Parsons’ most famous piece, “Caught.” Works by choreographers Robert Battle and Jamar Roberts are also on the program. Parsons makes extremely engaging, exuberant, and athletic dances, with an emphasis on the athletic.
His ensemble pieces effortlessly hold your attention, both because of the inventive and musical movement he conjures up, and because of the intricate spacing, patterning, and relationships he develops between the dancers. His work requires dancers who are not.
