Photo: Parsons Dance. Via altervista.org.

DANCECleveland celebrated the National Day of Dance and kicked off its 60th season on Saturday, July 25 by co-sponsoring a performance by Parsons Dance at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Before the renowned contemporary dance company took the stage, other events filled up the festive occasion. Local dancers were able to attend master classes with members of Parsons Dance (and David Parsons himself) earlier in the day. Later came hip-hop and ballroom dance demonstrations from area companies Show Peace Entertainment and La Danse Cleveland. Immediately before the appearance of the Parsons Dance company, locals who had rehearsed a bit of choreography via a video feed got to come onstage. Members of Parsons Dance joined in. So did dancers from The Seldoms company.

The participation from The Seldoms was particularly interesting because the group spent the week of July 20-28 working on a new piece at The National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron, as part of the center’s pilot cycle. The National Center for Choreography is a joint project from DANCECleveland and The University of Akron; Knight Foundation has pledged $5 million over five years toward the center.  It was created to provide both space and technical support for choreographers to make new dance, and it is only the second institution of its kind in the country.

“Whirlaway” by Parsons Dance Company.

The climax of the festive celebration day was a performance by Parsons Dance. The company was there to kick off DANCECleveland’s 60th season.

David Parsons’ “Whirlaway” (2014) led off the concert. The dance is set to the music of Allen Toussaint. Toussaint’s “Going Down,” “Yes We Can Can,” “Whirlaway” and “Play Something Sweet” are New Orleans-style rhythm and blues. The tunes make you want to move. It’s that kind of feeling that made watching the athletic and energy-filled dancers of Parsons Dance so enjoyable. The dancers seemed to feel at ease, loose and relaxed in the piece, as though they were just out having a good time dancing to some funky music.

Structured around the notion of whirling, the audience watched as dancers swirled their arms and legs in a variety of eye-catching patterns. Parsons has a gift for creating novel small-gesture or off-beat moves that grab attention. In this work, dancers often grabbed their hands behind them and whirled them in circular motions as they moved forward or sideways. The effect is of even more rapid and complicated movement than one would otherwise sense. “Whirlaway” is a very effective dance.

The company next performed “Hymn” (2007) by choreographer Trey McIntyre, who has previously received funding from Knight Foundation to support his work with DANCECleveland. Set to music by CocoRosie, the piece has a spare, almost stark and hollow electronic rhythm and blues aspect to it.

That musical feeling fit well in McIntyre’s male duet: The dancers curved around each other repeatedly, almost as though encircling one another and closing in. The mood created was a seductive one, yet there was also a bid for dominance between the two characters in the piece. In a cleverly designed move, one dancer faced away from the stage on his hands and knees, with feet flexed. The other dancer slowly worked around him while at one point lifting over him by stepping on his heel. That’s an unusual move.

Parsons Dance. Photo via cleveland.com.

Right before intermission, Parsons Dance performed Robert Battle’s “Train” (2008). Begun slowly, with dancers upstage left, the work quickly picked up both speed and strength as dancers assumed various poses.

The music by Les Tambours du Bronx emphasized the driven feel of the dance work, with its banging, percussive beat. Dancers whirled at great rates of speed through the piece in strong power moves. At times they marched. At others, they did a series of moves where they crouched a bit, and then jumped forward with their arms beside them for emphasis. The move suggested train wheels rolling over and over.

The pace picked up more frenetically until Section I of the dance ended with one dancer flailing his arms as though trying to recover his balance. The second section continued the notion of power. A solo female dancer at one point was seated on the stage but bouncing up and down. The move looked extremely difficult, but showed the power of both the dancer and the dance.

The audience at the performance loved this work. Several people were on their feet as soon as the last note sounded.

The second half of the concert changed the musical mood. The company performed David Parsons’ “Kind of Blue” (2001). The work is a dance tribute to legendary jazz musician Miles Davis. Done to Davis’ “So What,” the dance did not seek out the various complementary phrases of the music through layered dance. Instead, the dancers embodied the more upbeat elements in the music, leaving the darker moods to play off by themselves. Dressed in black, the quartet of dancers seemed to dance toward the edges of the lighting on the stark stage.

Parsons Dance performing “Nascimento.” Photo courtesy of Parsons Dance.

The evening’s concert concluded with Parsons’ “Nascimento” (1990), a work named for the composer Milton Nascimento, who created the music as a gift to the Parsons Dance company.

The work seemed much slower than Parsons’ other pieces. In this one, the dancers seemed to search through the lilting, almost undulating Caribbean rhythms that define the piece. Wearing lighter pastel garments, the dancers moved along with the music’s increasing pace. By dance end, they seemed to be frolicking to the work, as though they were simply enjoying the music, the dance and life. The mood was a good, if unusual, way to end a dance concert.

Parsons Dance was a good way to begin DANCECleveland’s 60th season. Parsons’ choreography exudes a love of dance.