create usually guarantees that the critic don't mind feeling lost. In the words of Shaw, "the difference between a Big Dance Theater event and work by someone like, say, Richard Foreman is that Big Dance will send you into a trance state-and then shake its finger at you and wink." When asked about the division between theater and dance, Parson said: "The separation of dance and theater- this is a lifelong irritant for me! In my personal and very subjective timeline, the distrust in Western theater of dance all began post-18th c. Since then, we audience(s) have been increasingly subjected to mind-numbing, un-ironic, unambiguous “reality” on stage. The Ancients, 2000 years ago, those plays were all danced and sung; in Shakespeare's day- the actors danced; in classical Japanese theater the acting students begin with years of dance training. Our contemporary body-less, dance-less theater– it feels fear based, (but I tend to think everything is fear based so don't trust me on that!) But is it related to our Victorian fear of the body, fear of corporeality, of sex? Does the divorce stem from our bias of mind over body, rather than mind/body? But yes, the separation must have also to do with the modernists’ hierarchical crowning of the primacy of “the word”; the modernists held the word as honorable, while poor dance was considered tawdry, the work of whores and … women! The things that dance owns: ambiguity, layer, mystery, abstraction, the non-narrative— these are the work of the devil! They hide, they suggest, they imply, they don't have a morality or any answers. So, in my tiny corner, I have tried to resurrect dance in theater. Dance is the sacred object for me; it is to be held close and protected from harm, and restored to its rightful place in the pantheon of materiality." Works with Big Dance Theater Sacrifice (1991) Sacrifice was the first of Parson's large scale works and her first work at Dance Theater Workshop, curated by David White, who would champion Parson's work for decades. Set in something like a beauty parlor, this piece incorporated some text from Harold Pinter and was accompanied by a score of repetitive gestures executed by five pairs of men and women. The Gag (1993) The Gag premiered at Dance Theater Workshop in 1993. This large-scale work was based on the myth of the Cassandra figure in Greek mythology and