Dance, deepened: Contemporary company extends the length and vision of new work

By Kevin Kinder

Posted: October 30, 2009 at 8:49 a.m.

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FAYETTEVILLE — Contemporary dance choreographer David Parsons has been doing this for more than 25 years. Just never this much, this big, this involved.

He’s concentrated his efforts - like so many modern dance choreographers - on 25-minute pieces.

Then, Parsons heard the music of the East Village Opera Company performed live at a club in New York City, where Parsons Dance has been based since its inception.

He immediately knew 25 minutes would not contain his ideas for a new project.

He soon contacted the East Village Opera Company, a New York-based troupe who updates classic opera arias with electric instruments, about the possibility of a partnership.

There was other planning, namely, staging and choreography, to be carried out as well.

About a year and a half after he was first inspired by the idea, Parsons completed “Remember Me,” a feature-length dance that includes the movements of his award-winning dance troupe backed by the neo-classical sounds of East Village.

The show debuted in January at New York City’s Joyce Theater. It has since been screened for public televisionand was launched in September as a national tour that will visit the Fort Smith Convention Center on Thursday.

It is a much more involved show than the one that debuted in January, Parsons said by phone from New York.

It approaches a Broadway show in terms of staging, characterization and production value.

“You’re [the audience] actually following the journey. It’s got an incredible physicality, and great dancers,” he said.

The story is structured around a love triangle involving a set of brothers and a potential bride. That relationship, naturally, is fraught with emotion.

The telling is buoyed with live vocals courtesy of the lead singers of the East Village Opera Company. To music recorded by the Grammy-nominated company in the past several years, the 12 touring dancers create what Parsons describes as their own alternate world.

Coupled with the 18thcentury arias from artists such as Beethoven, the scenes - and the dancers - are often soaring.

“You take these beautiful arias, and you think about the emotions. It gets overblown emotionally, but it works,” Parsons said.

It works well, in fact,according to the press that the New York debut received in the days following the first production.

“Awesome dancing. …Perpetually smoldering.

Lusty, sensual movement.

Parsons enters the realm of pop spectacle with a vengeance,” The Village Voicewrote in the show’s wake.

“It’s been very exciting,” Parsons said of all the praise. “We’re just pleased that it’s doing so well.”

Sports, Pages 14 on 10/30/2009

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