Parsons Dance Company, City Center, May 5-10, 1998.

PARSONS DANCE COMPANY CITY CENTER MAY 5-10, 1998 REVIEWED BY GUS SOLOMONS JR.

David Parsons has talent and movie-star looks, and his company is one of the busiest around. Still, according to his prodigious preseason promotion, he'd been nail-chewing about his group's debut at City Center, a big theater to fill. Not to worry. His dances burst onto the stage with nonstop, robust motion, colorful costumes, and glossy production; they're clever, energetic, and utterly accessible.

Parsons sprinkles his dances with liberal quotes from his mentor, Paul Taylor, our all-American dancemaker: toed-in jumping, angular arm gesturing, women hurtling into the air to be caught by their partners heartstoppingly close to crashdown. Nascimento, named for the composer of its infectious, rhythmic Latin score, is a bright, breezy escapade with the exuberance of Taylor's Esplanade. The eponymous Bachiana, but for the composer and David Woolard's black and red costumes, might be Taylor's Arden Court (with music by Bach's near contemporary, William Boyce).

Parsons avoids getting too serious; whatever his subject--be it depression (Mood Swing) or the plague (Ring Around the Rosie)--he diffuses darker emotions with humor. His nine accomplished dancers constantly bound around like exuberant fawns, making the overall concert experience seem like a meal of desserts.

In one premiere, Anthem, gossamer flags of all sizes billow--gold, silver, red, and blue--as dancers dash across the stage clad in William Ivey Long's streamlined take on nineteenth-century military jackets. The group pageantry frames several duets, like quicksilver Patricia Kenny's and lithe Jason McDole's handto-hand duel with sticks, or unflappable Mia McSwain--a ringer for Taylor's longtime star Carolyn Adams--in rugged alliance with strongman Robert Battle.

But, as in old-fashioned Hollywood war pictures, the combat is sanitized: fighters emerge, unmarred, between streaming banners to continue dancing. Shelly Palmer's over-the-top-lush, epicfilm score asks the question, "Where's John Wayne when we really need him?"

Also premiered was Instinct, a duet for Parsons and guest virtuoso Vladimir Malakhov, on loan from American Ballet Theatre. An intriguing Yeti-like creature--devised by costumer Long--reclines centerstage. Malakhov, wearing a shaggy top, and Parsons, in matching pants, are the composite monster that can be alternately all-furry or all-naked, depending on their joint configuration. The two halves groom each other, then cavort like vaudevillians, but the hastily-made piece doesn't fully explore the rich partnering potential implicit in its premise.

One cannot overestimate lighting designer Howell Binkley's enormous contribution to the success of Parsons's work. His imagination adds dramatic nuance and dynamic phrasing to Parsons's structural formula of plunking inventive duets between full-company passages. In Ciosure, deployment of four couples into expected splicing pairs, diagonal lines, and cascading canons is enlivened by Binkley's upstage "footlights" that change pattern and intensity in time to Tony Poweli's pulsing score.

Performed on every program was Parsons's signature solo, Caught. Strobe flashes, controlled by the leaping dancer, make him appear to hang in midair. Malakhov inserts some exciting balletic pyrotechnics into his version of the applause-grabbing number. Another evening, spectacular Jaime Martinez (the troupe's associate artistic director) dances it with strobe timing so precise that the suspended animation is truly miraculous.

Other company standouts are Charissa Barton, a shot-from-guns energy explosion; blithely gracious Elizabeth Koeppen; Ruth-Ellen Kroll; and Matthew Rodarte. Whether Parsons will learn to move us more deeply with his dances remains to be seen, but at this comparatively early point in his career, his highly polished dance machine dazzles with the best of them.