Feature: Breaking Down Barriers at The Brooklyn Ballet

People are staring.

Little old ladies with tiny dogs in strollers, moms with toddlers, businessmen on coffee breaks all stop and stare at the Brooklyn Ballet, peering unblinking through the giant windows of the bright, airy studio space where the company is rehearsing its 20th anniversary performance.

If Lynn Parkerson, the Brooklyn Ballet founder and artistic director, notices the strangers' scrutiny, she gives no indication. Parkerson sits calmly on a stool, back straight in a hint of the perfect posture no ballerina ever really loses, and focuses her attention on the dancers.

On the floor, a ballet dancer strikes an attitude and grabs the hand of a hip-hop dancer gliding across the stage, as if on ice skates. In a pas de deux, the two dancers combine their bodies in one seamless movement to end the number. The music, piped in from a recording of the performance, swells and then fades out under the rapturous applause caught on tape from the first time this work dazzled audiences 10 years ago.

Outside the window, passersby linger, captivated by what they saw.

For many, ballet and hip-hop live on opposite ends of a spectrum and what middle ground exists is occupied by something closer to modern or contemporary dance. But the Brooklyn Ballet, with Parkerson at its helm, has refused that binary. For 20 years Parkerson has expertly fused the grace of ballet with the raw beauty of street dance to create an artform that breaks down barriers between dance styles, performers and communities.

"What I'm always surprised by is the connections that happen through the choreographic process," Parkerson, 69, says from a coffee shop after the company's rehearsal. "I love the unexpected that emerges. I want to see things I've never seen before. To bring forms to life that I haven't done before."

The idea of bringing new things to life underscores the company's 20th anniversary performance, Rejoice! The Village Dances, performed April 20-23rd at The Mark O'Donnell Theater. While a monumental anniversary like this often sees companies dusting off archival pieces, the Brooklyn Ballet will premier a new work, Scripture, from Parkerson, as well as a restagings of Antony Tudor's Fandango (1963) and the company's 2013 10th anniversary work Spiders, Cooks, and Mood Swings.

The company has been rehearsing for weeks and yet the studio is still filled with energy. Everyone wants to be there, creating something that is beautiful because it is interesting, that is unique because it dares to try something new. Parkerson stands in the middle of this energy, harnessing it and expanding it, with notes and corrections. Her co-choreographer, Mike "Big Mike" Fields, stands beside her, incorporating her corrections into his direction for the hip-hop dancers.

"It's a conversation," Fields says to the pas de deux dancers, referencing how their two styles should work together. "Who is initiating? How do you share the dialogue?"

Parkerson was inspired to build an interdisciplinary repertoire after seeing a version of the Nutcracker ballet that used hip-hop dancers. Fields replied to a notice she posted seeking street dancers and their decades-long year partnership was born. Working closely with Fields, Parkerson, a classically-trained ballet and modern dancer, leads the ballet choreography while Fields, a Brooklyn-born performer specializing in hitting, animation, waving and isolations, guides the hip-hop dancers. When asked what makes them work as a team, Parkerson laughs and says that "all of his ideas are just right ones. He instinctively goes where the piece is going."

"Lynn allows the dancers to be creative in a collboartive effort so we can show what it means to express all the meotions and movements thatn any dance style can offer," Fields says about Parkerson's approach to choreography. "I can't wait to do more [with her]."

Parkerson, originally from North Carolina, moved to Brooklyn in 1984. She was transitioning from a prosperous career in Europe, dancing and choreographing for leading ballet and modern companies, to a new adventure as a wife and mother. Brooklyn became her homebase and, upon discovering that it lacked a ballet company, she founded one.

"As I began to know Brooklyn and its people, I wanted to have a venue for diverse dancers -- diverse in both race and technical style -- to reflect Brooklyn's culture. I also wanted to produce seminal works of major choreographers for Brooklyn audiences," Parkerson explains.

Parkerson's dedicated to reflecting the street styles she first encountered in Brooklyn with the classical ballet she's spent her life performing. She describes the village dances of the older ballets like Coppelia or Giselle as one-step removed from the dance that pops up on a Flatbush corner. For Parkerson, dance -- in any form -- is just about people, their stories and their history. "My work is about finding that connection and creating that juxtaposition," Parkerson says.

While that juxtaposition appears natural on stage, it took audiences a moment to recognize what they were seeing. Parkerson describes how, in the company's earlier days, they'd perform on the street as a part of their outreach efforts and people would mistakenly assume the hip-hop dancers were interrupting the ballet performers, like party-crashers. Even the hired crew, unfamiliar with the Brooklyn Ballet's style, would try to ask the hip-hop dancers to leave.

Parkerson laughs about it now, but being a pioneer in a new artform isn't easy. While her creative vision was, and is, unshakable, and she's found a fantastic partner in Fields, there were lean years. Payroll can be hard to make in the arts, let alone as a nonprofit in the arts doing something no one -- especially no benefactor -- has seen before. Parkerson considers herself fortunate that, when other ballet companies closed, or closed themselves off to certain dancers, those artists found their way to the Brooklyn Ballet.

"In 2002, it was so clear you had the one Black girl in the New York City Ballet. Or just one person of color in an entire company," Parkerson says. "It was so segregated. I wanted the opposite of that."

To dance with Parkerson is to be both flexible in body and mind. Ballet dancers, used to a rigid rehearsal structure, expect each beat to be choreographed. While a street dancer, used to a more fluid process, is more likely to offer an interpretation of the big picture. Parkerson, who sits in the middle of these two instincts, acts as an interpreter. If all dance is language, and different styles like different dialects, Parkerson's job is to find all the cognates to bring the dancers together.

"The idea of unison doesn't have to depend on looking exactly like another person," Parkerson says. "One can be very creative without having that."

With the Brooklyn Ballet, Parkerson has welcomed guest artists Ingrid Silva, Dylan Santos, and Paunika Jones from Dance Theater of Harlem. She also helped to launch the careers of twin brothers Shaakir and Naazir Muhammad who now dance with Den Norske Opera & Ballet, and Houston Ballet, respectively. Today, her company reflects not only her inclusive values, but also the environment in which it creates. In recognition of her contributions to Brooklyn's cultural community, Parkerson received the Betty Smith Arts Award as part of the Women's "Herstory" Induction Ceremony in 2007 and in 2006 she received the Paul Robeson Award for Artistic Excellence and Community Service. Notably, the company has partnered with Downtown Brooklyn to bring dance to the streets, performing a series of free classes in public squares around Brooklyn. For many, these classes are their first exposure to the arts and having diverse dancers makes it more accessible.

Accessibility, and opening up non-traditional pathways to the arts, is important to Parkerson, who didn't begin formal ballet training until she was a teenager. "I was 13, 5'6 and brand new to ballet. I had to work really, really hard," Parkerson says.

Even with a late start, she became an apprentice with the Boston Ballet at age 16 -- just three years after she began her ballet journey-- and later with the Chicago Ballet. She performed Nutcracker ballets and famed ballet master George Ballanchine's masterpieces before making her way to New York City. She performed with the Harkness Ballet and was on scholarship with the Merce Cunningham School. However, when companies began to fold, Parkerson traveled to Europe seeking work. In Munich, she was asked to choreograph for the first time and her life changed.

"I was completely hooked on how natural choreographing felt. Dancing was hard, but choreography didn't feel hard to me," Parkerson says. "Sure it's hard to create a great dance, but I found the thing I wanted to do."

Parkerson toured Europe performing and choreographing before returning to America with her family. As her life transitioned, she also began to seek out new, more supportive spaces. To be a dancer in New York City in the 1970s was brutal, with weigh-ins and tyrannical choreographers and cash-strapped producers. "Choreographers would make dancers cry, or tell them they're fat," Parkerson says. "It was this odd patriarchal, misogynist world that created great dancers -- dancers who did what [the choreographers said] because they wanted the job -- but that was it."

In Parkerson's company, she has never cared how much a dancer weighs or where they trained or whether they can do exactly what she says. In fact, Parkerson prefers a dancer who can act as a creative partner and help her interpret and translate an idea, especially as she navigates her own shifting ability to demonstrate and show.

"I can still move, I can still dance, but I'm not in the same shape I was in my 20s," Parkerson says. "For me, for a while now, it's become about the dancers in the space and what we can do together. I just provide jumping off points."

Recently, Parkerson has found herself wondering how many more jumping off points there may be. After all, with so much success underscoring years of hard work, it would be easy to allow a 20th anniversary performance to act as a soft retirement. Parkerson also has other things that require her attention. She's a wife, the mother of three adult children and, as of a few months ago, a new grandmother.

"As I get older, I ask myself 'am I finished here?'" Parkerson reflects.

She's quiet for a moment then. Rehearsal is done for the day. Her work, for the moment, is done, too and around her the coffeeshop bustles. Downtown Brooklyn, the community she loves and that has reciprocated that care, is moving on with its day, moving forward.

Parkerson, too, she declares, will move forward. "I'm still getting stuff out there. I'm still producing work that has an audience," she says. "I'm still creating dance that is about being who we are and being seen for who we are."

Whether it's 10, 20, 30 or 40 years on, creating is what keeps Parkerson coming back for more -- more shows, more choreography, more barrier-breaking artistry, and more reasons for passersby to stop and stare.