Known for nearly 40 years of remarkable athleticism, David Parsons has built his celebrated Parsons Dance and has gained global popularity for his fast-paced and physically rigorous pieces. Often labeled a “joyful” choreographer, Parsons spoke to ICONS about his inspiring career and his focus on creating a stable and successful organization. His brave enthusiasm has helped launch his company on massive global and domestic tours and brought in some of the most acclaimed choreographers to work with his dancers.

ICONS: How did your early training and performance career impact your desire to be a choreographer?

David Parsons: I was raised in Kansas City, Missouri and was a wrestler and gymnast, with my forte being the trampoline. When I was eleven, I woke up one morning to learn that my father and my brothers were gone. They left my mother, but I stayed with her until I was seventeen and one of my brothers came back home. I said, “are you staying home? Are you going to take care of mom?” He said “yes,” and three days later, I was on a train to New York City with $70 in my pocket. I was out of there. Up to that point, my dance training happened because my mom put me in an arts camp so I’d have something to do. 

At the camp, I met Cliff Kerwin and Paul Chambers, two guys who were in Hanya Holm's dance company. So here I was, a young man learning the Hanya Holm technique, which was very good for dancers. Eventually, I joined Missouri Dance Theater, where Cliff Kerwin and Paul Chambers were the directors, and I also met  Lane Sales, who worked with Limón, and Milton Myers. When I saw Milton and Lane fly across a Kansas City gymnasium I knew, I wanted to do that. That's where I got my technique. I love technique because once you get it, you have the freedom to fly.

ICONS: You've probably been profiled over 100 times easily. What would you like our readers to know about your life in dance and choreography?

DP:I became a choreographer because I was lucky enough to begin my dance career with Paul Taylor. The thing I learned from Paul was that you can build your own world. If you build an organization that pays everybody, your product is obviously good enough for you to perform throughout the world, and you can set your works on other companies.  That's all I want. A lot of choreographers are trying to get to Broadway or do movies or whatever. I never wanted to do that. 

I like what I was given when I was seventeen and an understudy with Paul. He was a dear friend of mine, and he helped me see that you can build a world around being an artist. I don't need a lot of money. If you're making really good work, when you sit in the theater with your loved ones and others and the show is really exciting, you get that visceral audience reaction, that's what I like. You feel like a billionaire. You cannot buy that. I don't care how much money you have. 

ICONS: Is there a difference dancing your works yourself versus now when you're creating them on the dancers?

DP: For sure. I spent twenty years performing in my own company, and it's just too much. When it was time for me to stop dancing, I had no problem because I had probably danced too much at that point. But then again, by dancing for a long time, you acquire skills that you would not have otherwise. I can see a dance from being in the dance, and I can also see it from the outside. It's almost like you have two eyeballs that are outside your brain. It’s very important that you go through the struggles of being a dancer so that you have the power to move forward.

ICONS: What drives you to create new works moving forward into the 40th season of Parsons Dance?

DP: The thing about me is that I am always happy where I am, but it's all about the next work. And it's all about the organization growing to support the performers and the staff and the tech people. That's all it is, and that's enough. The only thing you must do is make sure that you're not creating boring pieces, that you're kind of still in the mix of what's going on. Don't become an old hat.

ICONS: Your work is always described as athletic. Where does that come from and how does that contribute to your choreographic vision?

DP: Dancers train their whole lives, and then they wanna dance. They wanna jump. The body can take so much more than people think. Dancers have very short careers, and they want to feel what it's like to be a super dancer. One of the reasons why dancers stay so long with us is because they can do their whole careers with Parsons Dance. That's what we do: train dancers. There's a lot of mediocre dance. It hurts our industry. So if there's one way to keep our industry healthy, it's to find ways to make dance really exciting.  One of the things that's sitting right in front of you to do that is athleticism.

ICONS: You started your company with a lighting designer, Hal Binkley. Can you tell us about that relationship?

DP: I joined Taylor when I was seventeen; I met Howell when I was eighteen. We toured the world together, and he became one of the biggest lighting designers on the planet. An example--he got a Tony for Hamilton. He died in 2020, and I produced a documentary about him which you can watch online at https://howellbinkley.com/.

Hal was part of the founding of the company.  I don’t use many props, so lighting is huge in my work. I was in the original Momix with Moses Pendleton, and I learned so much. It was all props. But I always wanted to have that basic choreographic skill like a Mark Morris or a Paul Taylor. You just know how to do a human body on stage, simple and pure. That was the way we went with Hal. To this day, I have lighting cues in my head while I'm making a piece because Hal lit ninety of my dances.

ICONS: Are there tools in your choreographic process that you find every time you make a piece?

DP: One of the things that helped me was that I danced with different choreographers. It wasn't studying them or anything, it was just seeing them get a show ready to go. I worked with White Oak with Mark Morris and Misha [Baryishnikov].I worked with Peter Martens, and, for four years, I was a guest artist with New York City Ballet.  Moses was a big inspiration. I would work with Momix, while I was working with Paul Taylor. When I had time off from Paul, I would tour in Europe with Moses and make pieces with Momix in Connecticut. It was really hands-on, down and dirty working with choreographers, really going on the road with them. When you're working with people like that, you start watching them and your toolbox becomes better. 

ICONS: You've opened doors for a lot of other choreographers; you host multiple guest choreographers per season and give them access to these dancers that you're cultivating. Can you tell us how this developed and what it means for you to bring in these new voices?

DP: I'm very proud that my ego was not big enough that I had to be a sole choreographer. When I came into the New York dance world in 1977, there was Graham, there was Limón, there was Taylor, and there was Ailey. The only person who got it early was Ailey. While at Taylor, I was itching to sneak off to work with Moses Pendleton just to try and get something different. Not to say that Paul was boring to work for because he was always really challenging and he had great ideas. But Alvin was the one who taught me how to meet people and help them.

The dancers don't get bored doing your work all the time. You get somebody else in the studio, so there's new energy. It's all about new energy in the studio. If you don't have that, it's just a dead end. And one of the most glorious and satisfying things was when Robert Battle ran one of the biggest dance companies around. I saw him do a piece at Juilliard, and I thought this guy is talented. So even before I hired him, I knew that I wanted to produce him. It was the most satisfying thing for me to see somebody go to that level.

Now, Rena Butler is doing work for my company. We just commissioned Jamar Roberts, who Battle made the first resident choreographer at Ailey. It's a very rich life. It's been wonderful so far, and we will keep doing it.

ICONS: What advice would you give to an emerging choreographer?

DP: You're still your product. If you do not pay your people, you're not going to go anywhere. People think that they could just start a dance company, but it's a business. You need to pay your people. You need to give them medical insurance. We have a retirement fund that we pay into. It's all about taking care of your people so your brand grows. If it's too esoteric or whatever, you might live for a little while, but your product should be something people actually wanna buy.

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BIOGRAPHY: https://www.parsonsdance.org/about/david-parsons

VIDEO DEMO: Parsons Dance at 40! 

CREDITS: 

Photography  © Lois Greenfield,  Portrait of David Parsons David Parsons, and performers Parsons Dance.

Additional photography © Bill Herbert, Andrew Eccles, and M. Fusco

CREATIVE TEAM ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

Interviewer: Charles Scheland

Executive Content Editor: Camilla Acquista

Executive Assistant: Charles Scheland

Executive Director: Vladimir Angelov

Dance ICONS, Inc., September 2024 © All rights reserved