Parsons Dance Review

Due to space constraints in Monday’s Calendar, Times dance critic Lewis Segal’s review of a seven-part Parsons Dance Company program at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Friday was cut so that only five of the seven segments were covered. Here is the rest of his review.

Completing the program: two intense, twisty showpieces by company dancer Robert Battle to music by John Mackey. “Strange Humors” made Henry Jackson and George Smallwood into the unwilling and often deliberately ungainly physicalizations of the violin and drums in the score: accompaniment as destiny. “Mood Indigo” used three duets to trace a progressively dark view of interpersonal relationships, with social- and jazz-dance cliches inventively fractured and resequenced. Smallwood and Mia McSwain looked especially hot in the contortions of the second duet.