The Laguna Dance Festival was founded in 2006 by Artistic Director Jodie Gates, former principal dancer with The Joffrey Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. Gates is also the current Vice Dean and Artistic Director of the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. Over the past fifteen years Gates has presented members of numerous companies bringing some of America’s best dance artists to Orange County.
This year the festival included performances by Parsons Dance, Ballet West, and RUBBERBAND at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. I attended the Friday, September 27, 2019 performance of Parsons Dance and left in awe of the dancers. David Parsons is an award-winning choreographer who first performed with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, MOMIX, and with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Mark Morris in the first White Oak tour before founding Parsons Dance in 1985.
David Parsons – Photo courtesy of Parsons Dance.
The program included five works by Parsons and one by American freelance choreographer Trey McIntyre. In all five, it was the dancers who continued to dazzle the audience with their incredible abilities, breezing through Parsons’ choreography that was filled with jumps, leaps, multiple turns and complex lifts. One could see Paul Taylor’s influence, but Parsons has, over the years, found his own choreographic voice.
Choreographed in 2012, Round My World was structured on, around and within circular movements that included arms, lifts and circling patterns in Parsons physical and emotional orbiting world. It was primarily a movement piece, but one could not help but see and feel the intertwining of relationships.
Costumed in beautiful powder blue by Designer Emily Deangelis (recreated by Barbara Delo), a unified circle intensified before dividing into series of couples that gently folded into a trio of duets moving in unison. The dancers formed circles with their arms, intertwined the shapes and rotated them while being lifted. The sensual, rhythmic and luscious music was by Canadian-born cellist and composer Zöe Keating. In the final movement, rich sounds of her cello joined with other instruments in Keating’s Legions (Reverie) guided the performers to bond, break apart, and reunited to come full circle.
The cast included Zoey Anderson, Deidra Rogan, Shawn Lesniak, Henry Steele, Joan Rodriquez, and Katie Garcia.
Hand Dance (2003) was exactly that, a dance for five pairs of hands, their fingers and a few inventive formations of their owners’ forearms. Parsons never ran out of shapes, patterns or humorous situations and fortunately the work ended before he did. He used every gimmick in the book: waves, flashes, spurts of sparkling explosions, piano playing fingers, and humorous scene of a finger-man walking down a hill to dive into the darkened abyss. The people attached to those arms and hands were never known, even during the bow. Also, cast for this piece was listed in the program simply as five dancers.
One of the highlights of the evening was a work inspired by the life and songs of Aretha Franklin. Eight Women choreographed by Trey McIntyre in 2018 was performed to six songs sung by “The Queen of Soul” and throughout McIntyre continued to cause surprise with great choreographic invention. He set the dancers to perform as a group only to have it become a single dance, a duet or a trio. Lifts came from nowhere, and his entrances and exits were ever-changing. Most impressive, McIntyre managed what few choreographers seem to understand, to have dancers in constant motion while never losing a sense of breath, space, or stillness.
McIntyre wove his dancers through Franklin’s legendary vocals and never once let them upstage his choreography. He honored the music and the artist with dancing that was sensual, athletic, inventive and always human. McIntyre created characters that felt real and familiar without becoming too literal, and portrayed a world filled with optimism. Something that we all greatly need.
The cast of Eight Women included was Zoey Anderson, Daniel Sima, Deidre Rogan, Shawn Lesniak, Henry Steele, Joan Rodriguez, Katie Garcia, and Sumire Ishige. The Costumes were by Sylvie Rood.
Microburst, choreographed by Parsons in 2018, felt somewhat introspective. The movement focused on the arms and torso combined with simple walking patterns – all while physically visualizing the score. Though not my favorite work of the evening, I very much enjoyed the score by tabla player and composer Avirodh Sharma and observing Zoey Anderson, Shawn Lesniak, Deidre Rogan, and Eoghan Dillon keep up with Sharma’s complicated rhythms.
First performed in 1982, Parsons’ Caught is fascinating to watch and a tour de force for the dancer, performed here by the incomparable Zoey Anderson. The work makes use of a strobe light effect that caused Anderson to appear to never touch the ground as she leaped and jumped about the space, always returning to a standing position center stage bathed in a pool of light. Anderson traveled from upstage to downstage, but we never saw her move her feet. She appeared to stand motionless mid-air while traveling from downstage to upstage and taking a moment to gently wave at us. It is a magic trick of light, but one that takes amazing timing on everyone’s part. Caught is indeed a crowd pleaser.
For the final work, Parsons returned to his love of flowing movement and musicality with Nascimento, choreographed in 1990. Costumed in beautifully tailored street clothes designed by Santo Loquasto (recreated by Barbara Delo), Nascimento centered around people and their relationships. It had moments of romance, humor and tenderness, and always filled with glorious dancing.
The entire cast of Parsons Dance are some of this country’s best, but the ones who continuously drew my eye were Zoey Anderson, Deidre Rogan, Shawn Lesniak, and Henry Steele. The person who washed the stage with brilliant colors but who never out shone the choreography was Lighting Designer Howell Binkley.
Written by Jeff Slayton for LA Dance Chronicle, September 30, 2019.
To visit the Parsons Dance website, click here.
To visit the Laguna Dance Festival website, click here.
To visit the The Dance Company – Trey McIntyre Projects website, click here.
To find out who else is performing at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, click here.
