Big Dance Theater

Biography

Founded in 1991 by Annie-B Parson, Paul Lazar, and Molly Hickok, Big Dance Theater creates original dance/theater works which mix and re-mix dance, visual design, music, literary and found text. The company often works with wildly incongruent source material, weaving and braiding disparate strands into multi-dimensional performance. Led by Co-Artistic Directors Parson and Lazar, Big Dance has delved into the literary work of such authors as Twain, Tanizaki, Wellman, Euripides and Flaubert, and used dance as both frame and metaphor to theatricalize these writings. 

Big Dance Theater received a Bessie awards in 2002 and 2010; the company was awarded an OBIE in 2000 and BDT company members received 5 other Bessie awards and an OBIE award for their work with Big Dance. In 2007 the company received the first-ever Creativity Award from Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. Annie-B Parson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography in 2007, and a 2011 Lucille Lortel nomination.

Big Dance Theater has been presented internationally and nationally at theaters including: Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, Classic Stage Company, Japan Society, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Walker Art Center, Yerba Buena, On the Boards, UCLA Live, and The Spoleto Festival. Internationally, the group has performed at many festivals and theaters in France (Nantes, Rennes, Brest, Mulhousse, Paris, Lyon), Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Brazil and Germany. Most recent commissions have been from Les Subsistances in Lyon, Chaillot Theatre National in Paris and The Walker Art Center.