![]() TS: You’ve said the lack of footwear came from wearing the suits, and not wanting to put your performers in dress shoes. You’d see a face peeking just above the stage. He’d kind of be lurking, or hiding behind speakers. But Spike would be there and we’d spot him in the aisles. He would come to shows in advance of the filming, and videotape the show, so he could study it and get to know it. Jonathan did too, but I wasn’t as aware of him. Tony Stamp: What was the biggest difference between working with the late Jonathan Demme on Stop Making Sense, and Spike Lee on American Utopia?ĭavid Byrne: Spike might have been in the audience more often than Jonathan. Tony Stamp spoke to David Byrne via Zoom. Lee captures all this with his signature flair. It’s surprisingly politically charged, and features some weighty moments, but is always buoyed by Byrne and his band’s incredible onstage energy, not to mention their virtuoso playing - often delivered while performing choreographed moves. Click here for details.Īmerican Utopia started as a concert, became a Broadway show, and is now a movie directed by Spike Lee. Byrne and his players all wear grey suits, and none wear shoes. The new film weaves songs from his entire career through a narrative structure that features spoken word interludes, choreography, and an eleven-piece band who are wireless and free to roam the whole stage. Thirty six years later, former bandleader David Byrne has released a follow up that's as significant in its own way. And Parson’s path is one that continues to push the boundaries of dance on Broadway.Stop Making Sense, the 1984 movie that captured Talking Heads performing live at the height of their powers, is still widely regarded as the best concert film of all time. “Through that statement of people singing and dancing together and David speaking a little bit about where he lives as an artist and how he views what’s going on, you get this larger statement of where we are as a community and where we need to go,” Parson explains. ![]() She calls David Byrne’s American Utopia a feel-awake experience, not just a feel-good one. It’s a beautiful problem that David Byrne charged her with-incorporating every person on stage into the choreography-she says, adding that she prefers limitations, rather than starting with a blank canvas. “Normally we think of choreography as steps, but it really is an organization of bodies in space.” “I hope that the show can influence the way people can look at theatre and movement in theatre as larger than the way we typically think of choreography,” Parson says. So rather than jumps and twirls, the 11 performers walk across the stage without any characterization. “Pedestrian” is a technical term in dance that means everyday movement. “The dance material has a pedestrian quality, but it also comes from the absurd, of abstraction, of disassociation.”īut don’t mistake pedestrian for average. “The movement, the vocabulary is not derived from musical theatre,” she says. In fact, she wonders if the staging for the uncategorizable concert evening may be unlike anything attempted before on the Great White Way. ![]() James Theatre, with an opening set for October 17) in a singularly uncluttered way. That’s accomplished by some special harnesses that make movement possible for even those toting heavy instruments, but Parson’s work isn’t typical of what you might immediately associate with a choreographer working on Broadway.Īfter working with Byrne on Off-Broadway’s Here Lies Love and the tour of his album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, Parson makes her Broadway debut choreographing and staging American Utopia ( now in previews at the St. In David Byrne’s American Utopia, choreographer Annie-B Parson makes sure that even the band members dance.
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