Parsons Dance Doesn't Miss A Beat

Parsons Dance
Artistic Director: David Parsons
Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts
13 April 2013

 The new piece Round My World, made in 2012 is a killer.  It opened the show, broke the ice, and put the audience on notice that they were in for a fine evening of dance.  The second piece was the Ebben section of Remember.  The program listed Hand Dance and Nascienento Novo but they were not performed.  In the Question and Answer session after the performance associate artistic director, Elizabeth Koeppen explained that Hand Dance had been done here recently and that they decided to make some changes in the program. The company also performed A Strays Lullaby by the Polish born choreographer Katarzyna Skarpetowska.  Although born in Warsaw, Skarpetowska graduated the New York High School of Performing Arts and The Julliard School.
Caught, the first piece after the intermission, was made by Parsons in 1982.  It is a crowd pleaser of the first water.  It is a solo that uses strobe lights to make is seem as though the dancer is frozen in air.  Suffice it to say the crowd went wild.  Caught is a  wonderful coup de theatre, but the best piece was the new one, Round My World.  The evening ended with Swing Shift from 2003.  Everything was choreographed by David Parsons except the piece by Skarpetowska. The company is amazingly strong and amazingly skilled.  Two of the dancers from this small company are from Marymount Manhattan College: Abby Silva Gavezzoli, and Christina Ilisije.  As well as dancing Ilisije is a choreographer and keeps a blog at WWW.living-dance.com.  Parsons Dance is precise, profound, & pleasing to the eye.  One hopes they will return next year.