Annie-B Parson


Annie-B Parson is an American choreographer, dancer, and director based in Brooklyn, New York. Parson is notable for her work in dance/theater, post-modern dance, and art pop music. Parson is the artistic director of Brooklyn's Big Dance Theater, which she founded with Molly Hickok and her husband, Paul Lazar. She is also well known for her collaborations with Mikhail Baryshnikov, David Byrne, David Bowie, St. Vincent, Laurie Anderson, Jonathan Demme, Ivo van Hove, Sarah Ruhl, Lucas Hnath, Wendy Whelan, David Lang, Esperanza Spalding, Mark Dion, Salt ‘n Pepa, Nico Muhly, and the Martha Graham Dance Co.

Early life and education

Parson received her BA in Dance from Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut in 1980.
She received her master's degree Columbia University/Teacher's College in 1983.

Big Dance Theater

Parson founded Big Dance Theater in 1991 with Molly Hickok and Paul Lazar. She has since choreographed and co-created dozens of works for the company, ranging from pure dance pieces to adaptations of plays and literature, to original works combining wildly disparate materials. Her work with Big Dance has been commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The National Theater of Paris, The Japan Society, and The Walker Art Center. Parson describes Big Dance as "a group of people who are interested in pushing dance into the theatrical realm and pushing theater into the dance realm." To her, Big Dance has a "total greediness for all the pleasures of theater and dance" Critic Helen Shaw wrote of Big Dance as a "fluid gang of performers and designers clustered around the married co-directors, choreographer-director Annie-B Parson and actor-director Paul Lazar. The company is – as it says on the bottle – a hybrid group, ignoring customary divides between dance and theatre." The company began as a loose but dedicated and generative alliance, made up largely of women including Stacy Dawson, Molly Hickok, Tymberly Canale, Cynthia Hopkins, Rebecca Wisocky, and Kourtney Rutherford. This group ebbed and flowed with others joining in over the years.
The work of Big Dance is almost always non-linear, and frequently disinclined to have a narrative Though the lack of a linear story occasionally leaves critics bewildered, the intentionality, playfulness, technical precision and the ambitious scope of the worlds they create usually guarantees that the critic don't mind feeling lost. In the words of Shaw, "the difference between a Big Dance Theater event and work by someone like, say, Richard Foreman is that Big Dance will send you into a trance state-and then shake its finger at you and wink."
When asked about the division between theater and dance, Parson said:
"The separation of dance and theater- this is a lifelong irritant for me! In my personal and very subjective timeline, the distrust in Western theater of dance all began post-18th c. Since then, we audience have been increasingly subjected to mind-numbing, un-ironic, unambiguous “reality” on stage. The Ancients, 2000 years ago, those plays were all danced and sung; in Shakespeare's day- the actors danced; in classical Japanese theater the acting students begin with years of dance training. Our contemporary body-less, dance-less theater– it feels fear based, But is it related to our Victorian fear of the body, fear of corporeality, of sex? Does the divorce stem from our bias of mind over body, rather than mind/body? But yes, the separation must have also to do with the modernists’ hierarchical crowning of the primacy of “the word”; the modernists held the word as honorable, while poor dance was considered tawdry, the work of whores and … women! The things that dance owns: ambiguity, layer, mystery, abstraction, the non-narrative— these are the work of the devil! They hide, they suggest, they imply, they don't have a morality or any answers. So, in my tiny corner, I have tried to resurrect dance in theater. Dance is the sacred object for me; it is to be held close and protected from harm, and restored to its rightful place in the pantheon of materiality."

Works with Big Dance Theater

''Sacrifice'' (1991)

Sacrifice was the first of Parson's large scale works and her first work at Dance Theater Workshop, curated by David White, who would champion Parson's work for decades. Set in something like a beauty parlor, this piece incorporated some text from Harold Pinter and was accompanied by a score of repetitive gestures executed by five pairs of men and women.

''The Gag'' (1993)

The Gag premiered at Dance Theater Workshop in 1993. This large-scale work was based on the myth of the Cassandra figure in Greek mythology and the piece incorporated the text of radical feminist writer Andrea Dworkin. Molly Hickok played the central role, starting a decades-long collaboration between her and Parson. The piece was also inspired by the writings Christa Wolff with text by Aeschylus, Pinter and Marguerite Yourcenar. It featured original music by Walter Tompson, performed live. Four monitors on the floor included footage of small scampering animal babies. The New York Times described The Gag as “a bouillabaisse of a theater-dance piece...There's a little Greek tragedy, a bit of Harold Pinter, a dab of Tennessee Williams and a large dose of fashion and comic high jinks.”

''Bremen Freedom'' (1993)

Presented by the Cucaracha Theater, and originally made for NYU Students, Bremen Freedom, by the west-German playwright Rainer Fassbinder, told the story of Geesche, a woman so sick of being controlled by the men in her life that she methodically poisoned them, and ultimately herself. The Village Voice wrote that the production included “a little cabaret shtick, some cross-dressing, a few dollops of disjunction, plenty of stylized tableau-making, a pinch of Catholic imagery, several actresses playing the same role, a bit of lovely/creepy choral singing, and heaps of that unmotivated goofy dancing that made Brace Up such a hoot.” Although the reviews referenced some of the performative similarities to Cabaret,, the Village Voice insisted that “these kids come on like innovators, not imitators, and they know how to deliver a spectacle piping hot.” Though highly choreographic, this work was the first “play” that Big Dance, a largely dance based company, had staged.

''Lucifer Kicking All Night Long'' (1994)

''City of Brides'' (1995)

In 1995, Parson was featured in the Young Choreographers and Composers at the American Dance Festival in North Carolina. She was paired with composer Richard Einhorn and the two created “City of Brides,” performed by five barefoot women and accompanied by a complex score for piano, violin and cello based on Stravinsky's Les Noces. This would be the first “erasure” work, Parson's term for choreographing to a piece of music and then erasing it, so that while the music was never heard by the audience, the movement material that was inspired by his rhythms endured.
The News & Observer wrote that “Parson is a talent to be reckoned with.” A reviewer for the Toronto Arts Journal CallTime wrote that Parson was the “most refreshing voice among a new generation of choreographers,” and that her blend of dance and theater had “created a movement language which is accessible to any audience member regardless of age, race, gender, or previous knowledge of dance” The piece also played at the Dance Theater Workshop in NYC, Fall for Dance Festival in NYC, and the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.

''Hula Girl'' (1995)

''Don Juan Comes Back from the War'' (1996)

premiered at Classic Stage Company NYC in 1996. It was a joint production by the Classic Stage Company and the Cucaracha Theater, with Lazar and Parson as co-directors and her choreographing. The New York Times lauded their direction, writing that they had constructed a “witty and elegant interpretation” of Odon von Horvath's bittersweet play. The play follows Don Juan as he returns home from the first World War in search of his fiancé, who, unbeknownst to him, has died. Her ghost follows him throughout the play. Horvath, a Hungarian playwright who wrote in Germany until he fled the Nazis, set his play in the immediate aftermath of World War One, but the play is full of “philosophical jibes” at his enemies. Parson and Lazar animated these ideas with “highly stylized choreography and musical arrangements” that allude to both Don Juan and popular German music of the 1920s. The result might have annoyed Horvath, who was notoriously fussy about staging, but they probably let an American audience grasp his meaning, and certainly his moods, better than any more literal presentation could."

''The Gas Heart'' (1997)

“The Gas Heart” is a Dada “classic” by Tristan Tzara,  one of the founders of that movement. In the Big Dance rendering of the play the fierce comic, lyric text comes vividly to life with a staging that is distinctly choreographic and choreography that is distinctly theatrical. It is as if Tzara wrote the play for the Big Dance Company.
From NYTimes review “...The comic triumph Here is The Gas Heart, by Tristan Tzara, a witty Dadaist take on avant-garde sophisticates working, flirting, effortlessly executing impossible dance steps, looking as classy as Cecil Beaton portraits and exchanging superior sounding banter that is utter nonsense. Few Dada plays survive; this one is exquisite and exquisitely performed.”

''A Simple Heart'' (1997)

This dance-theater adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's A Simple Heart follows the story of Félicité, a servant who watches as every being she is connected to slowly dies or leaves her. Parson cast two dancers as Félicité, who occasionally danced in unison, parallel, and sometimes split entirely while always remaining connected. They separate for the first time when Félicité dies. The piece employed minimal use of language, instead relying on “spare yet rich vignettes” to tell this simple story with a dry tenderness, intended to match the tonality of the Flaubert.
The Village Voice wrote that Parson and Lazar had created a “cold, compelling world of emotional disintegration.” A Simple Heart premiered at the GIFT Festival in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1997. It was also performed at the Dance Theater Workshop, NYC, Classic Stage Company, NYC, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Massachusetts, the Hitchcock Center, Dartmouth New Hampshire, Middlebury College in Vermont, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina.