In American Utopia, Byrne’s Music Is the Draw. The Dancing Is the Joy

(Bloomberg) -- In 1983, David Byrne and his band, Talking Heads, launched a tour called Stop Making Sense that was the visual manifestation of their music: dry, witty, surprisingly rousing. Jonathan Demme made a movie of it, now considered one of the great rock films. In her review of Stop Making Sense, critic Pauline Kael zeroed in on Byrne’s unique physicality: “Jerky, long-necked, mechanical-man movements,” she wrote, noting, “he's always in motion—jiggling, aerobic walking, jumping, dancing.” 

The idiosyncrasy of that music and those moves dazzled Annie-B Parson, who was studying dance at Connecticut College at the time and saw the live show when it came to New York. Byrne “was central to my formative artistic sensibility, more than any choreographer,” Parson recalls. “I was making all my dances and listening to Talking Heads and I was so affected by his aesthetic.” 

More than a quarter-century later, Byrne headlines American Utopia, another radical concert experience, which will open at Broadway’s Hudson Theater on Oct. 20 (through Jan. 19). On a bare stage stripped of platforms, mic stands, cords, and drum kits, and surrounded by curtains of metal chains through which Byrne and his performers charmingly climb, a cheerful community forms. With infectious grins, they invite the audience in with newer songs such as Everybody’s Coming to My House and such canonical classics as Once in a Lifetime. 

Parson, once the adoring spectator, is now Bryne’s collaborator as the show’s choreographer and musical stager. In American Utopia, she’s bringing her own brand of intelligent, off-kilter movement to the Great White Way, making the spectacle’s onstage community move both as a cohesive whole and as a collection of free-spirited individuals. She’s as surprised as anyone that she’s there. “It’s not the trajectory I think I had been on,” she says. 

Parson founded the contemporary performance troupe Big Dance Theater in New York in 1991. BDT presents a stew of movement that can’t be categorized, with music, text, and visual design in vigorous productions that tackle literary, historical, and contemporary themes. The sensibility is surreal; sometimes wacky, often poignant. Parson conveys character with a physical vocabulary that tends more toward stylized human behavior than virtuosic dance sequences. For decades, her work has been acclaimed and embraced by the city’s tight-knit experimental dance crowd. In other words, it’s way too avant-garde to have such neighbors as The Lion King and Tootsie.

“We are required in downtown theater to experiment,” she says. “The bottom line is: You’re nudging the form forward. [On Broadway] that’s not the contract with the audience. It’s a different contract,” one that prioritizes technical prowess in support of overall entertainment. “Both good,” she adds. 

Parson’s unconventional approach and fresh perspective is what attracted Byrne to her work. Neither remembers the initial encounter (Parson: “I feel like it was in a church basement in the East Village”) but Byrne identified a like-minded artist. “I loved the quotidian nature of much of the movement,” he says of Parson’s work. “It made it all very relatable to me—‘I could do that’—though some of it is much harder than it looks.” He also appreciated her humor and the fact that her dancers came in all shapes and sizes. 

He invited her to contribute choreography to his 2008 concert tour with Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Additional collaborations followed, including Byrne’s 2012 world tour with St. Vincent and the 2013 hit off-Broadway musical Here Lies Love, an immersive pop-disco portrait of Philippines figure Imelda Marcos. That show was directed by Alex Timbers, who serves as American Utopia’s production consultant. 

“She has a voracious intellect and her curiosity about humanity and the possibilities of the empty stage are what fuel her,” Timbers says of Parson. “She also has an uncanny ability to marry her unique choreographic vision with movement that always looks good on her performers, whether that’s a person that has years of dance training or has never danced onstage before."

That quality proved invaluable to the concept of American Utopia, which turns its nine musicians and two singer/dancers into an active ensemble that travels artfully around the stage with the precision of a marching band and the intimacy and playful spirit of a garage band. Like an amoeba, their shape flows from casual clumps to supportive circles to clean geometric lines, often emphasizing a song’s mood, such as with the contemplative Dog’s Mind or the jubilant Every Day is a Miracle.

Despite the appearance of informality, each configuration and interaction has been carefully considered, and the material for the two dancers is a mesmerizing flurry of gestures that suggests a kind of extravagant, abstracted sign language conveying the production’s joy and good will. It’s not the choreography of virtuosity, as you’d find in 42nd Street; it’s the choreography of relationships, intentions, and suggestive images. 

“Choreography is the aesthetic organization of bodies in space,” Parson explains, quoting her own, newly conceived definition. Steps—such as spins, leaps, and tap shuffles—are components of the choreography but not its essence. Proximity, direction, and energy are also key ingredients, which Parson details in her recently released book, Drawing the Surface of Dance: A Biography in Charts, a collection of drawings, writings, and a deck of cards meant to stimulate choreographic creation. 

And that philosophy, simple yet cosmic, matches Byrne’s idea of reimagining the possibilities of the modern rock concert—his rejection, as Parson puts it, of “a whole tradition of this sloppy thing” that is the mostly male rock shows of the 1970s and ‘80s. While American Utopia seems to wink at Stop Making Sense in certain ways (see: the formal, all-gray suits), the new production has evolved into a more conversational, heartfelt experience wherein Byrne talks frequently to the audience about life and politics, with no hint of his signature irony. 

Meanwhile, as Parson readies American Utopia for its debut, she’s also preparing for performances of Big Dance Theater at N.Y.U. Skirball on Nov. 8 and Nov. 9. That show will comprise three works: one fashioned as a birthday party with notable New York dance veterans; one that pays homage to ballet in Parson’s singular, deconstructed way; and one that draws from a typically atypical 1963 score by John Cage. “My company just continues to remake itself, evolve, devolve,” she notes. “It’s a work in progress.” 

That attitude of constant experimentation, expected by downtown dance audiences, now infuses the unique spectacle that is American Utopia. “I haven’t changed the way I work for a Broadway audience, and nobody has asked me to,” Parson says. In the process, she and Byrne are nudging Broadway forward as well. 

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Rovzar at crovzar@bloomberg.net

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