FOR ARTS SAKE: MICHAEL PARMENTER

Synopsis: - taken from Pinnacle Catalogue - Arts . . Documentaries.
Dancer Michael Parmenter performs excerpts from his recent work A Long Undressing and talks to interviewer Alison Parr about his own personal stripping away in coming to terms with life shortened by AIDS.
From bleak Invercargill to gay New York, Michael Parmenter has led a varied and eventful life. Looking back over 40 years Parmenter can identify diverse experiences from sheep shearer, Brethren lay-preacher, dancer, choreographer, AIDS celebrity, goatherd, to writer and now storyteller. In A Long Undressing Parmenter recounts in his own words with occasional forays into dance, the history of his body and soul.
Previous shows have attracted high praise from audiences and critics. “I do not think any New Zealand choreographer has shown such consistent excellence and invention over such a time.”
“Now at 40, having lived well beyond the age that, as a boy I thought I would reach, there has come to me the desire to tell something of my life” says Michael Parmenter.