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Refined
kitsch from David Parker and the Bang Group Any postmodern choreographer who says Debbie Reynolds was his inspiration is either too kitschy for words or too witty for kitsch. David Parker and the Bang Group appear this week as the last offering in the Dance Celebration/Next Move Festival at Annenberg Center. At Tuesday night's opening, they made the case that kitsch filtered through them translates into refined repartee. Wordlessly, Parker and his partners, Jeffrey A. Kazin, Kathryn Tufano and Sara Hook, created a sweeping and scintillating discourse among themselves and with the audience. They communicated with syncopated rhythm, offbeat timing and extended, jazz like riffs of movement. Their subtly suggestive facial expressions, jarring against their often ludicrous costumes, gave us a delightful evening watching master performers. Part of their interaction is about intersection. In Tender Traps, Kazin and Tufano distort their torsos into ostrich like poses and bend and twist into each other, dancing as a single organism. With Parker in On The Tip Of My Tongue, they dress in black vests with neat ties tucked into their crinolines, and pointe shoes. They clench harmonicas in their mouths and all seem conjoined. Their six legs, pronged to the floor, look like pretty pink screwdrivers. With their arms angled out, they could be an extinct crab or the first Swiss Army dancer. Most of
their discourse is about percussion. Their body-slapping, pratfalls, head-butts,
knees in knee pads, and their feet provide the aural accompaniment. This
must be why they call themselves the Bang Group. Housebroken, with Parker and co-choreographer Sara Hook, used Bach's St. Mat-thew's Passion. Hook danced herself from drab and prissy to seething with silent heat. The dance drew on the ordinariness of a long, shared domestic life. A tender moment brought sudden tears to a few of us. Baffle-ment was key in this dance, as if to say that life offers no guarantee of clarity. —Merilyn
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