Patrick Parson, left, is a benevolent dictator. The founder of Ballet Creole — celebrating its 20th anniversary this year — Parson is passionate about the company and he pushes his dancers hard to articulate his vision. “This company is like my child,” he says. “I love each of the dancers but I’m stern with them because I don’t want them to mess up. We all mess up, it’s natural, but I try to prevent that like any good parent.” It’s three hours into a rehearsal at the company’s headquarters in a decommissioned west-end public school and Parson is still cracking the whip: “I don’t want to see you working,” he chastises one dancer. “This is a joyous dance. If I can see you working the audience will too. I want to see your joy!”
This weekend’s run of Soulful Messiah marks the seventh consecutive year for the show, which is built around a 1992 recording produced by the great Quincy Jones. Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration sounds like a contemporary mash-up of gospel, funk, jazz, rap and R&B featuring Gladys Knight, Joe Sample, Chaka Khan, Johnny Mathis and a host of other great singers.
When Parson was given the recording in 2000, he’d been searching for a Christmas vehicle for his company and was contemplating a contemporized, Caribbean-style Nutcracker. “I still want to do that some day,” he says, “but this CD provided a wonderful opportunity. It was the rhythm of the music that really inspired me, the way Quincy Jones took Handel’s Messiah and Americanized it, translated it through Black American voices while still keeping the integrity and structure of Handel’s original work. It moves you, so it was a good piece to work with.”
Snow falls gently outside the studio’s double-height windows but inside Parson’s dancers are breathing heavily and glistening with sweat. Running more than an hour, Ballet Creole’s Soulful Messiah is intensely physical and beautifully fluid.
Sunday’s performance will be taped by a team of videographers in the hopes that having a full-length recording will help spur touring opportunities. “This is our 20th year,” stresses the choreographer. “Now, my priority is to make the world know who we are.”
“Ballet Creole is a pioneer of black dance in Canada. There’s really no company like us in this country, in the States, yes, but not in Canada. I hope people understand what I’m trying to do with this piece and I hope they’ll support black dance as much as possible, no, not just black dance, the arts as a whole.”
As for his quietly firm demeanour during rehearsals, Parson, above centre, says he doesn’t even think about it. “The dancers are there to give me what I want,” he says flatly, “that’s why they’re here. Everybody has their strengths and once I have identified a dancer’s strengths, I push them as much as I can. Sometimes that leads to conflict because people think they know their abilities, they don’t trust the person who is looking from the outside. But they have to remember that they’ve come to do somebody else’s work — they are my voice.”
WHERE/WHEN: Soulful Messiah is at Fleck Dance Theatre (207 Queens Quay West), December 11 – 13, times vary, $20 – $45.
Photos by Christopher Jones
Social bookmarks
Scroll to the Form to leave a comment.
Currently there are no comments related to article "Soulful Messiah: A Joyous Dance".