Mark Morris can be a playful fellow, and for his latest work, Sport, he collaborated with a playful musician, who was no longer living. Erik Satie wrote his Sports et Divertissements in 1914 (an unfortunate date) and published it, updated, in 1923. His original little book consisted of an introduction and the scores of twenty piano pieces under a minute in length, illustrations of each by Charles … [Read more...]
Dancing with Lou Harrison
The Mark Morris Dance Group celebrates the centennial of composer Lou Harrison's birth. In 1991, the composer Lou Harrison wrote a piece for gamelan and harp and called it In Honor of the Divine Mr. Handel. On June 28, 2017, in Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Mark Morris Dance Group premiered a work, Numerator, set to Harrison’s Varied Trio for violin, piano,and percussion. The title of … [Read more...]
Operas That Dance
The Brooklyn Academy of Music presents Mark Morris: Two Operas, March 15 through 19. On the last day of July, 2013, I saw and heard an unforgettable performance in Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall. Mark Morris had directed Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River for a cast of Tanglewood Fellows and paired it with his 1989 visualization of Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas, performed by the Mark … [Read more...]
‘Tis the Season
Mark Morris's The Hard Nut at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House. Mark Morris’s The Hard Nut sets the knowing audience at the Brooklyn Academy laughing in ways that most ballets set to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker do not. But I doubt that ballet aficionados in St Petersburg in 1892 found their eyes moisting up either. This revival of Morris’s music-wise, tradition-flouting version melds human … [Read more...]
India in New York
Mark Morris curates "Sounds of India" for Lincoln Center's White Light Festival. Mark Morris has made many trips to India, beginning in 1981. I’ve only gone in my dreams. My fascination with the country’s dance styles came from seeing New York performances by visiting companies, dipping into epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, treating my dance history students to videos and master … [Read more...]
Dancing with Music
The Mark Morris Dance Group performs in its own Brooklyn space. Music often takes Mark Morris in directions I couldn’t have anticipated, as the programs for his company’s season at the Mark Morris Dance Center make clear. Only occasionally does a score’s history enter the picture, and, if it does, it enters with an enigmatic twist. His 2005 Cargo is set to Darius Milhaud’s La Création du … [Read more...]