Dancing to a genius in jeans

Craig Smith |

8/7/2008 - 8/8/08

Talking to David Parsons is fun. Not only because the American choreographer is interesting, articulate, and eager to talk about dance, but because he has a world-of-fun view. Certainly the word popped up several times in a recent phone interview about his dance Wolfgang, which Aspen Santa Fe Ballet performs this weekend in a mixed-repertoire program at the Lensic Performing Arts Center.

Set to music by Mozart and commissioned and first danced by ASFB in 2005, Wolfgang is on the slate with two other works in the company's repertoire: Twyla Tharp's Sweet Fields and Helen Pickett's Petal. ASFB performed Parsons' The Envelope here in 2001, and Parsons Dance, the company he founded in 1985, played here for Santa Fe Stages in 1998 and 2001."I feel great they're doing it again," Parsons said from Middletown, New York, in the Catskill Mountains, west of the Hudson River. "I enjoy the company very much; they're good artists. That's hard to achieve, that consistency. My hat's off to those guys."

Parsons has long been a major international dance player.The Chicago native, raised in Kansas City, Missouri, was a leading dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company for many years, and Taylor created a number of roles with him in mind. He has choreographed more than 70 works for Parsons Dance and has been commissioned by American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Jacob's Pillow, and the Spoleto Festival, as well as ASFB.

Over the years, Parsons has seen many changes in dance. One that especially pleases him is that today's dancers are generally proficient in modern and ballet technique, rather than just one form. "The technical ability of performers today, it's wonderful," he said. "When I started, we were all contemporary dancers. The ballet and modern worlds didn't mix the way they do now. All my dancers are trained very well in ballet also. So are those Aspen dancers. So to be able to mix that [Wolfgang] up with contemporary movement
and ballet was very exciting. It was fun!"

Where did the concept come from? For one thing, Parsons said, he loves Mozart's music. For another, the famous biopic Amadeus is one of his favorite films. In addition, he said, "I got to the point — I'd been choreographing since I was a young man, and it was time to take on some heavy-duty-genius music.

"Not only that; I'm an educator. I get really tired of young people not listening to things like this. No, I don't get tired of it, but I'm concerned that young people can't, won't hear this beautiful music. Not that you can't listen to anything you want to! But I want to try to keep the music alive with young people."

Parsons drew his music from the Symphony No. 25 in G Major and other works. "I'm a pretty musical choreographer, so the feeling behind it, the movement, is the music. Definitely!" he said. "The idea was to bring that excitement into today, put it in jeans, give it a contemporary flair, a touch of humor. Have the dancers really enjoy themselves onstage and don't take it too seriously. To bring it into today, so a young person could go, 'Wow, that was kind of cool.'"

Parsons also wasn't afraid to go against movement typecasting, so to speak: setting very quick movements to slow music, or vice versa. "There is a theme that happens twice; it's quite beautiful and well known," he said. "I wanted to see how fast the dancers could move through it, and then it's repeated again!

"I always read about the composers," he added. "Like I did for American Ballet Theatre, when I did a piece to Tchaikovsky's Little Russian [symphony]. It gives you a little more insight into the humanity of these people. We put these people on a pedestal, but they did everything we do."

Parsons is never afraid to use theatrical means — costuming, sets, movement and music — to heighten excitement and persuade his audiences to come along with him. Wolfgang uses a venerable, simple theatrical device to help make an effect: a black backdrop curtain with slits for the dancers to use for "invisible" entrances.

"There's a blackout curtain in back, with the lights focused off it. So it's like the dancers appear out of nowhere. It's been used many, many times in theater, but it's a beautiful effect." That it is: a famous operatic use is traditionally found in Wagner's Das Rheingold, where the gnome Alberich must change into different forms in the blink of an eye. Presto, change-o, blackout curtain.

How challenging is it to keep a company going for more than 20 years? Before he could answer, Parsons had to take a brief call. "Sorry about that," he said. "It's a lady from Aspen. She wants what you want — to talk!" He paused, then added, with what sounded like a grin in his voice, "Everybody who wants to talk with me goes off on that. People say, 'How's the company going?' as if they're really saying, 'How do you keep doing this?' In reality, it's what I do, and it's not exactly boring."

For example, besides the company's dance-art focus, it often takes on projects for business or industry, which give Parsons and the dancers different views of life. "We just finished a commercial," he said. "We do all sorts of stuff."

Parsons is glad ASFB is bringing Wolfgang back to Santa Fe, but he's extra happy about their performances of the piece at the Aspen Music Festival. "They're going to be doing it in Aspen at the tent with live music," he said. "That's one of the things that is the priceless payback for being a choreographer. That live music, I just love it. It's very difficult to get that to happen. I got it once with my company at the Joyce Theater and when touring with Billy Taylor."

Parsons has no intention of slowing down artistically or of limiting his options. He's in the middle of a project, for example, with the East Village Opera Company, which translates traditional opera into a rock idiom. "It's a full-length evening piece. I've done some work with the East Village; we're very excited. We all like this idea; the music is danceable; there's a real fun to it. It's definitely rock 'n' roll. I've heard rock 'n' roll opera a lot, and it makes 150-year-old songs sound so fresh. We're piecing them together with kind of a loose story line." Will it be fun? "We shall see!" Parsons said with obvious glee.

details
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet: mixed repertoire
8 p.m. Friday & Saturday, Aug. 8 & 9
Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St.
$20-$58, 988-1234