By Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 24, 2001; Page C05
First impressions are so important.
When the Kennedy Center opened in 1971, its first dance performance
was given by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a groundbreaking
company at the height of its powers. Friday, as the first production
of its first full season, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at
the University of Maryland presented the Parsons Dance Company, the
modern dance group headed by the highly sought-after choreographer
David Parsons.
This was quite a coup, but the choice also marks the Smith Center as
emphasizing crowd-pleasing popularity over a creative initiative with
lasting interest. The center is not alone in making this choice.
Parsons's name is favored by dance organizations looking to corral
that ever-elusive younger audience. Recently, even American Ballet
Theatre tried baiting its hook with the Parsons lure when it
commissioned him to create "The Pied Piper," an expensive, multimedia
children's ballet. It flopped.
The problem is not that Parsons is a bad choreographer -- he
understands the craft and can be visually clever. But he seems to be
short on ideas. He is, perhaps, overworked and overstretched. His
recent pieces -- he unveiled a premiere at the Kennedy Center last
fall and another at the Smith Center this weekend -- have not matched
the promise of his earlier works.
Yet if he's tired, his company still looks energized and youthful and
continues to circulate studio shots of its dancers captured in
midair, jauntily defying gravity. Call it truth in advertising. What
you see is what you get -- a momentary kinetic charge. When they hit
the floor, however, they are simply not that interesting. This is the
principle at work in "Caught," which continues to be Parsons's most
successful work. Elizabeth Koeppen was both supple and explosive in
this solo, timing her jumps to a strobe so that the light captured
her in what looked like extended flight above the stage. It is the
perfect expression of Parsons's talent, and like the Ailey company's
reliance on "Revelations," it is part of nearly every program. In the
Smith Center's relatively intimate Ina and Jack Kay Theatre, a
too-harsh light obscured some of Koeppen's efforts.
By contrast, "Annuals," the Smith Center-commissioned world premiere,
was decidedly dark -- in its shadowy lighting and somber black
costumes, and in its murky concept. Parsons has explained that this
piece refers to the occasions (birthdays, anniversaries and such)
that mark time passing. To this end, a dancer periodically walks
onstage carrying a candlelit cake as the others are romancing each
other or breaking off into anguished introspection. Whatever their
grievances, they failed to express anything universally meaningful.
John Mackey's jazz-inspired music, which he conducted, was this
work's brightest note.
You could appreciate the craft involved in "Sleep Study," a carefully
balanced, witty symphony of shifting, curling up and adjusting among
the pajama-clad dancers stretched out on the floor. But "Closure" and
"Union" were as self-consciously somber as the Brazilian-inspired
"Nascimento" was bright. "Nascimento" showed the dancers at their
high-spirited best, each jump carefully sculpted in the air, limbs
flying. It's like stop-action photography come to life.
However artistically uneven this concert was, Parsons's work was
tinged with an added poignancy. His group was scheduled to perform on
an outdoor stage at the World Trade Center the day the towers were
destroyed. In fact, members of his technical crew were headed to the
Twin Towers for a 9 a.m. rehearsal when their van got stuck in
traffic, narrowly avoiding the deadly terrorist attacks. "Nascimento"
and "Closure" would have been on that program, as well as a piece
titled, coincidentally, "Rush Hour."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company