David Parker

David Lee Parker is a native from Long Island, New York. He started his dance training at Long Island High School for the Arts and continued his studies at Mason Gross School of the Arts where he graduated class of 2018 with honors and received his B.F.A. in dance performance. David has trained at the Alvin Ailey Summer Intensive, American Ballet Theater Summer Collegiate Program, and Gibney Summer Contemporary Dance Program and has had the privilege to study abroad for a year in Israel at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. He has performed works by Stefanie Batten Bland, Antonio Brown, Camille A. Brown, Netta Yerushalmy, Ohad Naharin, Noa Zuk, Reggie Wilson, Darrell Grand Moultrie, Noa Wertheim, and Maxine Doyle, along with many others. He has also had the special opportunity to perform at the Suzanne Dellal Theatre in Tel Aviv, the Joyce Theatre, and NYU Skirball to name a few. David was an apprentice for Ronald K. Brown and has danced for Brian Brooks Moving Company, Visual Artist Carrie Mae Weems, QBC Company, Kyle Marshall and Kinesis Project Dance Theater. David is currently a full-time performer in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More.

Class Description: Foundations for Immersive/Physical Theater

The ultimate goal of this class is to equip dancers with tools that will help lay a foundation for immersive and physical theatre. Through rigorous improvisation, the dancers will be challenged to understand how to use one’s physical faculties and capabilities to articulate clear character and storytelling choices. Dancers will explore how elements of partnering, prop study, choice of music, text, and costume influence creative choices as well as the audience’s interpretation and experience. Dancers will be honing in on trusting the efficacy of mundane gestures and pedestrian movements in composition with immense physicality. All of this is to teach the dancers how to be keenly aware of the power of context when approaching any kind of stage or physical theatre work.

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