Known for creating some of the most challenging and exciting works presented in New Zealand, Parmenter, who began dancing in Dunedin in 1977, puts his ability to still be able to perform down to taking up choreography early in his career.
"Because I’ve been more of a choreographer than a performer, my body hasn’t been thrashed in the way that some people who’ve been dancing every night for 30, 40 years. So I actually am relatively unencumbered by injuries. My knees still work, I can get in and out of the floor, and everything still works.
"My body’s not suffered from decades of wear and tear."
The move to choreography came as a result of his late start as a dancer. Young boys from Invercargill in the 1960s and 1970s did not go to dance class, so it was not until he was living in Dunedin and watched a documentary about a European dancer who started at 19 that he had a "lightbulb" moment, realising it was not too late for him to start.
"The next day I went to a dance class at Shona Dunlop’s."
However, aware he might not have a long career due to not starting until he was 23, he decided to look at choreography, presenting his first piece at Allen Hall at the University of Otago in 1979.
"And it turns out I’m still doing it."
His latest work is a collaboration with dancer Lucy Marinkovich and jazz musician Lucien Johnson, who co-direct it, which began when Marinkovich was Caroline Plumber community dance fellow in Dunedin in 2021 and Parmenter in 2022.
The pair go way back — Marinkovich can remember being taught by Parmenter at the New Zealand School of Dance and in 2020 they danced together in her work Strasbourg 1518.
"Actually one of the greatest honours of my artistic life is that we’ve danced in each other’s works. Michael, who’d hate me saying this, but when I was a teenager, honestly, he was such an icon. I just kind of thought I’d get to meet him one day, and it’s quite amazing now years later that we don’t only work together, but he’s a friend. That’s how life surprises us," Marinkovich says.
It was while performing Strasbourg that Marinkovich raised the idea with Parmenter of making a work to Johnson’s suite of piano nocturnes.
Marinkovich describes the music "as little bit melancholic, but it’s like listening to velvet, it’s so sublime".
"He was very sweet. He invited us over for dinner, he made us this amazing curry and then we sprang the next show on him. So we played him the music, and we said, ‘this is it — the music is the show’. Michael just heard a couple of bars, and he was like, ‘I’m in’."
Johnson had created the works in the mid-2000s so Marinkovich had been playing with ideas in her head around the music for a few years.
"Lucy had from the beginning a very clear idea that lighting needs to be a part of the work. So it wasn’t so much about the choreography, it’s more about creating pictures using different elements of night, light and dark," Parmenter says.
As Parmenter was in Dunedin for the fellowship they did much of the development for the work in the city, bringing in lighting designer Martyn Roberts to work with them from the beginning.
"We were just playing with light and bodies and finding ways of partially lighting or obscuring bodies so that they’re not as clearly defined as when we see them in the broad daylight. And it’s that world of partly obscured, partly revealed through light that is being explored in this work," he says.
They also began looking at film noir, black and white films that are quite enigmatic and obscure.
"I think the world that we want people to enter into, I wouldn’t call it surreal, but it’s definitely dreamlike, and there’s a gentleness to this work. This is minimalist, and it’s very refined; it’s very elegant," Marinkovich says.
The group wanted to create a theatrical environment where people could experience the kind of contemplation and wonder that the music evokes. Both Marinkovich and Parmenter also dance in the piece.
Marinkovich called on inspiration from art nouveau dance pioneer Loie Fuller, whom she came across while she was in Dunedin on the Caselberg Trust’s 2021 Creative Connections Residency, and the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
"So we re-created [Loie’s] costume from 1852 and it’s this gigantic piece of silk. It was such an extraordinary thing to kind of create, but we needed the right silk to make it work, so there are these images that are evocative of night and of birds and of flight and a little bit of that kind of melancholy loneliness."
There is also a very strong French connection to the work, both Johnson and Parmenter having spent significant time in the country. And also as they have brought in France-based New Zealand pianist Jeffrey Grice (made an Officer of Arts and Letters in France in 1999) to play the works. Johnson met Grice in Paris after being introduced by the late composer Jenny McLeod, his godmother, many years ago and Parmenter stayed in Grice’s apartment while doing his doctoral research.
The nocturnes were premiered in France by Grice in 2017 at a soiree for the Society of the Friends of Maurice Ravel, the impressionist French composer.
Marinkovich, who had her first baby nine months ago, is looking forward to performing the work and is grateful to the Dunedin Arts Festival for commissioning the work.
So far juggling motherhood and dance had not been a problem with her son joining her in the dance studio since he was a baby, Marinkovich said.
"I think the thing is that there’s just such an innate pleasure in moving your body and dancing. Since he’s been an infant and a newborn, I’ve danced with him every day and every night. The dancing never stopped. The first time we looked at him on a scan, he was dancing away in there," she said.
Parmenter said they were "thrilled" to get the opportunity to do a Wellington season of the work after Dunedin but it was important to them to premiere it in Dunedin where much of the work had been done.
It has also been a great opportunity for him to continue his performance career. A lot of the movement is not intricately choreographed, allowing structured improvisation — a bit like a jazz gig — which works well for Parmenter.
"Not having to throw myself around with a whole lot of young people doing really way-out dance moves. Because the dance element is less extreme, I'd say, than you get with a contemporary dance programme, I feel very comfortable in it and have been able to contribute a lot to the process as well."
Over the years he has shifted away from performance and contemporary choreography towards Balfolk dance, a revival of traditional European folk dance that is very popular with young people in Europe.
"I’ve changed as a choreographer from making dance work for people to see to creating opportunities where people can dance. But it doesn't mean at all that I have to let go of my experience in contemporary dance, and particularly working with Lucy and Lucien, whose work I really, really love."
TO SEE
The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Dunedin Arts Festival, Allen Hall, 7pm, February 14, 2pm and 7pm February 15, 6pm February 16.
Also Jeffrey Grice Concert, Wānaka Concert Society, Lake Wānaka Centre, February 18, 7.30 pm
