2008-9 Academy Events showcase dancers, ethnobotanist

By Anne Jamison '09, Front Page Editor

If Academy Events are measured by inspiration potential, last year's Paul Farmer set the bar high. But a ten-person, modern dance company and a National Geographic explorer scheduled to appear may just give him a run for his money.

The David Parsons Dance Company will perform on November 10, and Wade Davis, an ethnobotanist, will address the community on April 6.

Parsons Dance Company's visit this fall will mark their third appearance at Deerfield. Former weekend co-anchor of NBC's Today Show David Bloom called the group "one of the most successful modern dance companies in the world."

Ms. Whitcomb said the Parsons Company is remarkably "accessible" to non-dancers because of both the nature of the repertoire and because of David Parsons' background as a high school athlete.

The Company performed pieces choreographed to Dave Matthews during their last visit to the Academy in 1990, and they plan on concluding this year's playlist with a dance to "In the End," also by Dave Matthews.

"It will be very exciting to see a company that has danced so successfully on the world stage come bursting onto our own stage," said dancer Ingrid Kapteyn '09.

"We try to have one major event in theatre, dance, or music every year so that every student will be exposed to a solid performance in each of the arts," said science teacher David Howell who has been involved with the Academy Events Committee for years.

April's Academy Event promises to be just as exciting. Ethnobotanist Wade Davis, author of best-seller The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985), will be "coming to campus and visiting classes, meeting with students, and speaking to the community," Academic Dean Peter Warsaw said.

"An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University," according to the National Geographic Society, for which he is an explorer-in-residence.

Mr. Davis believes strongly in preserving both languages and diversity. He said, "There's a tendency for those of us in the dominant Western culture to view traditional people -- even when we're sympathetic to their plight -- as quaint and colorful, but reduced to the sidelines of history."

As published in the September 10, 2008 issue of the Deerfield Scroll, the monthly newspaper of Deerfield Academy.