Be prepared. The Bang Group is not like anything you've seen before. Choreographer David Parker takes the rhythm of tap and body percussion, the antic wit of silent film comedy, the rigor and lavish movement of contemporary dance and mixes them into a completely new kind of dance theater . This work will make you laugh and it will make you think, but most of all it will make you feel. Welcome to The Bang Group.

David Parker and The Bang Group is a contemporary dance company which offers strikingly innovative rhythm-based dance theater. Using dance rhythm as a new dramaturgy, he draws his movement language from tap dance, vaudeville, silent film comedy and modern dance. His work integrates these diverse elements with impeccable choreographic structures and a wonderfully rich sense of humor. Parker tells stories full of poignant discrepencies between insides and outsides; peeling away surfaces to reveal the sensuous and vulnerable things underneath.

  

The dancers are liberated from their traditional muteness with a wide variety of rhythms that they make with their own bodies; from tap and percussion to scores for velcro costumes and toe shoes. This wordless but eloquent universe is free of references and takes off entirely on its own leaving audiences in stitches. The old distinctions between high and low art don't matter to Parker who likes things brazen as well as refined. He often pushes the classical until it bleeds into the vulgar but his work retains a sense of beauty even in the ridiculous.
 


Parker has choreographed for ballet (Verona Ballet, Italy), modern dance companies (Repertory Dance Theater of Utah), universities (University of Maryland), commercial projects (Stolichnaya Vodka Industrial) and for his own company which tours widely in Europe and North America. His research includes collaborations with other choreographers and artists from other media, such as his recent, acclaimed collaboration with Dutch couture design team Melanie Rozema and Jeroen Teunissen who won a New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award for their work with TBG. The company's mission encompasses the development of new audiences for contemporary dance as well as the mentoring of young choreographers through production, education and aesthetic support.

Contact Us