“Ooh that feels so good!” The speaker was not involved in a semi-pornographic film. She was a teenager watching a filmed pas de deux at a summer dance festival years ago. Others shushed her; this was art! Indoctrinated, did they even notice that the male dancer, hoisting his partner overhead, had placed one hand on her crotch? Please be forbearing when I tell you that this memory edged into my … [Read more...]
The Worlds of Mark Morris
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...]
The Unslaked Fires of Love
The White Light Festival presents Layla and Majnun, directed and choreographed by Mark Morris. How many poets have compared love to a flame and passion to a consuming fire— love that can obsess you, drive you mad? In the ancient tale of Layla and Majnun, the hero was born with another name; “majnun” labels him as one losing his mind over love for Layla, and, ironically it is that madness … [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...]
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...]
Come Spring!
The Mark Morris Dance Group performs at BAM. Was it George Balanchine who said he wanted us to see the music and hear the dancing when we were watching his ballets? Maybe he said only the first part of that. Mark Morris, I think, hopes for something similar when we see his choreography—not meaning that we should hear feet hit the floor, but that the dancers carry the music in their bodies, … [Read more...]
Two Brits and Mark
The Mark Morris Dance Group and Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Festival performs operas by Benjamin Britten and Henry Purcell. Mark Morris has journeyed into music in other ways beside making dances to compositions he loves. He has conducted orchestras, directed and choreographed operas. Two works presented in Tanglewood’s airy, wooden Seiji Ozawa Hall reveal his sensitivity to music in … [Read more...]