A valentine from David Parker at Joe's Pub

Jeffrey Kazin (left) and David Parker in Head Over Heels
at Joe's Pub
(photo by Yi-Chun Wu)

"I used to think of myself as a song-and-dance man manqué," said choreographer David Parker, as he welcomed a huge Valentine's weekend crowd to his latest show, Head Over Heels, created expressly for Joe's Pub and DANCENOW. "I've been able to realize my dreams here." Parker and his gang, The Bang Group, are perfectly happy to cram themselves into the Public Theater's little pie-wedge stage, and the cheerful nightclub setting serves them well.

The timely theme, this time, is love in all its ups and downs and uncertainties. That theme--surely you've noticed--owns lots of real estate across the artistic landscape and certainly plays out across all areas of great attraction to Parker: classic show tunes and romantic comedies, tuxedo-ed tap dance numbers and the like. Head Over Heels, with its intense "musical chairs" couplings--enacted in close quarters by Parker, Jeffrey Kazin, Amber Sloan and Nic Petry--marries conventional entertainment values to unconventional, and continuously shifting, romantic configurations.

Parker (left) with Nic Petry and Amber Sloan
(photo by Yi-Chun Wu)

Made for the Joe's Pub space-time continuum--that pie wedge, those 60 minutes, that audience serviced with food and drink and then quickly ushered out before the next crowd arrives--Head Over Heels compresses a lot into its limitations. There are ten numbers, all linked to the letter "R": Restlessness, Retrenchment, Replacement, Reconciliation, Reconsideration, Recrimination, Resolution, Resilience, Relapse, Restoration. A little too cute, this, and I lost track of which "R" was which in any given moment, but that probably does not matter. The "What's New, Pussycat?" section of "Replacement" showed the tightest example of Parker's clever intricacy of craft, with Kazin and partner Petry confined to and spinning around an axis as if dancing and figure skating atop a turntable.

More generous and bubbly in nature than subversive, Head Over Heels is, nevertheless, every openly gay-positive show--on television, in the movies, on Broadway, on the ballet stage and on ice--that folks from my generation should have been fortunate enough to see when we were growing up. Parker goes back to go forward.

Head Over Heels has closed. Keep up with The Bang Group's activities by clicking here. For information about upcoming events at Joe's Pub, click here.

AUDIO PREVIEW: David Parker

Delightful dance artist David Parker talks about his new collaboration with Jeffrey Kazin--Misters & Sisters: A Love Story in Song and Dance--in this audio preview.

Click here to listen.

David Parker and The Bang Group 

Misters & Sisters: A Love Story in Song and Dance

Joe's Pub
at The Public Theater
425 Lafayette Street

(between Fourth Street and Astor Place)

Manhattan

Thursday through Saturday, June 2-4, 7pm

Misters and Sisters, a new work by and about David Parker and Jeffrey Kazin and their performing alter egos, represents a new way of working for Parker. This show─a kind of autobiographical fiction─is inspired by and dedicated to Parker’s father, mystery novelist Robert B. Parker, whose words “Don’t look for yourself in your work, look for your work in yourself,” Parker pays homage to here. Delving into their lives together, Parker and Kazin, joined by Nic Petry and Amber Sloan, cut a swath through an array of romantic standards from the American songbook as they chronicle their life together in song and dance. Misters and Sisters includes dramaturgy by Anne Davison and musical direction by Anna Ebbeson.

Ticket information and purchase: 212-967-7555, online or in person at The Public Theater box office from 1-6pm, and at Joe’s Pub from 6-10pm daily.

a DanceNOW [NYC] presentation

Making bite-sized dance

Ever sit and watch some hyped, hyper-funded, bloated and disappointing production and wonder whatever happened to modest and incisive dance pieces?

Robin Staff, artistic director and producer of the DanceNOW NYC Festival, believes that size matters--small size, that is--and is prepared to put some money behind that notion.

Her festival artists will be challenged to "create a new work or present a repertory work seven minutes or less, that offers a concise, clear, and complete artistic statement."

Hooray!

The fest's announcement continues:

The artist that best meets the DanceNOW Challenge will be awarded a week-long residency at Silo at Kirkland Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, along with a $1000 residency stipend and a paid teaching opportunity at DeSales University, with whom DanceNOW has partnered since 2006 to bring New York City-based choreographer/educators to Bucks County/Lehigh Valley, to teach and perform. The artist will be selected during the Festival by a panel of administrators, educators, and peers.

Performances are scheduled for September 8-11 at Dance Theater Workshop.
As summer winds down, artists such as Kyle Abraham, Sydney Skybetter, Nicholas Leichter, Maura Nguyen Donohue, Camille Brown, Stefanie Nelson, Gina Gibney, Ellis Wood and Paul Singh will proffer what they hope you'll find to be good things in small packages.

Connect with DanceNOW NYC and its 2010 festival plans here.