David Parker & The Bang Group
www.thebanggroup.com

Proving that serious comic dance is not an oxymoron, David Parker & The Bang Group have surprised, delighted, provoked, goaded, and tickled audiences throughout America, Canada, and Europe. The rhythm-based theatrical dance group merges edgy and provocative wit with body percussion in a style all their own. Currently touring ShowDown – a hilarious rendition of the Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun in which Parker explores the sexism and gender roles that lie just below the surface. Also touring Nut/cracked - a new, fearlessly entertaining and wickedly irreverent take on The Nutcracker. This reinvention of the yuletide favorite liberates it from dance dogma as the dancers tap, shake, booty, sing, dance on pointe and do the Hustle. Nut/cracked is exhilarating!

David Parker founded The Bang Group in 1995 as a choreographic laboratory in rhythm, rigor and humor. Pressing through boundaries which once separated high and low art, comedy and tragedy, vaudeville and concert dance, The Bang Group has developed a solid reputation in both Europe and North America for its uncompromising wit, innovative movement and ribald approach to gender and sexuality. Parker gradually evolved a fusion style all his own in early works such as Bang and Suck which received a finalist prize at the Fourth International Competition for Choreographers of Contemporary Dance in Groningen, The Netherlands in 1994 and was a special citation of the Kurt Jooss Prize jury in Essen, Germany in 2001. Parker was also cited as a notable emerging artist by the jury of the 2002 Nijinksy Awards in Monte Carlo and his collaborative work with Dutch designers Melanie Rozema and Jeroen Teunissen received a 2002 Bessie Award for Design.

"The program was a surefire tonic for the ills of winter and the world.  Bottle that man."
 - Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times

Touring Programs
Tours with 5-8 dancers

Show Down
55 minutes
Tours with 6-8 dancers

David Parker & The Bang Group's all-dancing reinvention of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun. The work unravels the venerable musical's themes of sexism and gender roles, show business, transformation, and the juncture of love and ambition with freewheeling and anarchic vigor. Set to the beautiful recordings made by Judy Garland and Howard Keel for the 1949 MGM film version of the show, which eventually starred Betty Hutton, this show liberates these from the conventional musical-comedy narrative and takes place in a wholly contemporary choreographic world. The Bang Group dips and swirls, thuds, hoofs, taps and sings with their characteristic mix of precision and abandon through Parker's carefully crafted dances. No one is Annie and yet, perhaps, everyone is. Parker treats the score seriously as music and poetry and allows the humor to bubble up inevitably where it will.

Nut/Cracked
65 minutes
Tours with 5 - ? dancers
(community residents can participate in this program as an option)
It’s The Nutcracker, but definitely not as we know it. The Bang Group has taken every little girl’s favorite Christmas show and torn it limb from limb. Mixing Tchaikovsky’s original score with music by Duke Ellington, Glen Miller and others, the company turns the sugar-coated ballet into a percussive piece of dance theatre. Expect tap dancing, singing and some unusual pointe shoe activity. Nothing is sacred as Nutcracked twists and melds various dance traditions into an ode to American eclecticism that honors the power of the human urge to dance while riding Tchaikovsky’s voluptuous waves of rhythm.

Hour Upon the Stage
Tours with 8 dancers
This critically acclaimed new work is an exploration of expression through body percussion. A creative mixture of humor and humanism, rhythm and revelation, Hour Upon the Stage is, indeed, one unforgettable hour.

“When all eight cast members set about performing rhythmic passages in unison…they make the body-as-instrument into a joyous and exacting affair.”
– Village Voice (to read a online review please click here. )

Signature Repertory Program
Features selections from the repertory, including audience-favorite Bessie Award winning Slapstuck, a hilarious duet in which the dancers come literally unglued as they negotiate the perilous and hysterical results of wearing neck to toe Velcro suits. Additional options for program include Enough, music by Rachmaninoff, and Hind Legs, which explores the explosive percussive potential of one man’s toe shoes.

Outreach

Nut/Cracked
Ages 14 and up
Everybody dance! David Parker and the Bang Group will arrive at your venue at least one week early to rehearse with local teens who will join the company in the performances. Community groups, local professionals, school dance groups, and dance schools are all eligible. Members of TBG can incorporate dancers into the show with as little as 6 hours of rehearsal! Be a part of the process. Be a part of the performance.

Creation of New Work
(Or Setting a Completed Work)
A unique group work choreographed by David Parker.

I’ve Got My Degree! Now What?
(seniors only)
Students are motivated to be entrepreneurial and aggressive in their approach to a career in dance. Practical knowledge and ideas about how to actually achieve professional goals are shared through lectures, group discussions, and movement improvisations. May be offered through college's career counseling office.

Performance Skills
Go beyond technique. Explore performance issues of nerves, energy modulation, concentration, spontaneity, and audience relationship.

Repertory
David Parker and company members work with large or small groups instructing students how to celebrate the imperfections that flicker like the glint in Satan's eye at the core of Parker's oeuvre.