Manifesto
Ballet is an artform, a metaphor for the human spirit, rooted in the Baroque. Time, space and music its crucible.
From the civility and fashion of the french court to unabashed physicality, ballet continues to move past two centuries. Its technique, ever-evolving, embodies the history of human relationship and musical structure.
Ballet is paradox
surface and depth
history and now
beauty and suffering
strength and vulnerability
pain and ecstasy
Ballet is religion, a rarified technique learned through the monastic rituals of daily training, born of the desire to free the self through ultimate physical expression.
devotion
repetition
denial of the self
passionate science
freedom through discipline
emptying
becoming a vessel for art's will
rituals purifying a technique unbound by personal theatrics
a human vessel for the surging spirit and fire of God
I've returned to ballet, to its everlasting beauty that inspired me to enter the convent of dance in the first place,
to place this rarified technique in a context of individualism, experiment, and community
to create a lab/ temple
of passionate science.
This is the art form I explore, bend, twist, breathe my life into.
Lynn Parkerson, Artistic Director
09/07/02
“An innately spiritual embodiment of grace.”
Jennifer Dunning
The New York Times
“Ms. Parkerson successfully made her dancers seem witness to a miracle…one knew she was talking to God and the world.”
Jack Anderson
The New York Times
“A captivating series of gestures…liquidy curving torsos…though sometimes astonishing Parkerson’s choreography is laden with respect, making no attempt to impress or dazzle.”
Lisa Jo Sagallo
Backstage
“The high point of this year’s International Festival at Moers was the American dancer Lynn Parkerson…she makes music with her body like a musician on his instrument, and when she moves we feel it, that’s the way free music should be danced.”
Joachim Ernst-Berendt
Deutsches Allgemeines
Sonntagsblatt
“Poignant, impassioned…an eloquent outpouring of emotion.”
Jack Anderson
The New York Times
“Lynn Parkerson has captured a religiosity and with simple but deliberate gestures has convinced us of her piety and her wit.”
Phyllis Goldman
Backstage
