{"id":6444,"date":"2019-07-20T18:33:34","date_gmt":"2019-07-20T22:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=6444"},"modified":"2019-07-31T12:31:57","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T16:31:57","slug":"the-worlds-of-mark-morris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2019\/07\/the-worlds-of-mark-morris\/","title":{"rendered":"The Worlds of Mark Morris"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Mark Morris’s Sport<\/em>. Standing (L to R): Domingo Estrada, Jr., Lauren Grant, Aaron Loux, Lesley Garrison, Christina Sahaida, and Dallas McMurray. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Mark Morris can be a playful fellow, and for his latest work, Sport<\/em>, he collaborated with a playful musician, who was no longer living. Erik Satie wrote his Sports et Divertissements<\/em> 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 Martin, and wry, enigmatic words (think haiku that avoid an encapsulating last line) threading through the music, itself not concerned with resolving dissonances or belting finalities. If Satie\u2019s piece were performed as written, a pianist and speaker would collaborate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Morris has not<\/em> done is to construct a linear compendium of tiny dances, although tiny episodes certainly crop up. Nor has he provided a speaker. At Jacob\u2019s Pillow, Colin Fowler, the Mark Morris Dance Group\u2019s music director and pianist, rarely inserts long pauses between sections, and we never learn Satie\u2019s titles. Instead, we see the musical ideas generated by these repeated, dissected, and set against one another by Morris for twelve of MMDG\u2019s superb dancers, glowing in Nick Kolin’s lighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s how Satie labeled his pieces: \u201cGolf,\u201d \u201cTennis,\u201d \u201cWater Chute,\u201d \u201cSleighing,\u201d \u201cPuss in the Corner,\u201d \u201cFireworks,\u201d and so on. You can\u2019t miss dancers swinging an invisible golf club or tennis racquet. Or scanning the sky.  You\u2019ll notice a game of blind man\u2019s buff in which a bunch of people dodge Nicole Sabella, who\u2019s had a blindfold tied over her eyes by Noah Vinson.  You may imagine a sail when hidden dancers hold up a piece of fabric just so, or think of a playground when two guys swing Christina Sahaida high. But you may also realize how cleverly Morris is playing with these recognizable images in relation to the music. When one couple after another (man-woman, man-man, woman-woman, etc.) does an idiosyncratic ballroom dance across the front of the stage, not all are doing it to the music labeled \u201cEndless Tango.\u201d And at the same time, behind those partners, Dallas McMurray is being pulled along by someone (I forget who) with an invisible leash, and more dog walkers succeed that pair. Domingo Estrada, Jr. drags another performer along, and McMurray crawls after them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Mark Morris Dance Group in his Sport. <\/em>(L to R): Lauren Grant pulled by Domingo Estrada, Jr., Mica Bernas pulled by Brandon Cournay, Aaron Loux and Brandon Randolph pulling unseen companions. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Morris plays delicious games with Satie\u2019s variegated material. If I\u2019m not mistaken, we\u2019re hearing \u201cWater Chute\u201d when three men, supine with their legs together and their arms plastered to their sides, scootch along on their backs. But who knows or cares what piece of Satie\u2019s Morris is referring to when someone traverses the stage holding up his or her hands crooked into hooves?  In one voyage, four women loll, laughing, on \u201cboats\u201d (pieces of fabric) pulled across by four men. Is this \u201cSleighing?\u201d  Does it matter? During another such trip, the women wield unseen oars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the above come under the heading of Sports, but there are Divertissements too, even though Morris deleted them from the dance\u2019s title. Occasionally the dancers will leap happily or chass\u00e9 about in some \u201clovely\u201d spontaneous-looking dancing. They\u2019ll fall down and be helped up, or fall and get up by themselves. For a few brief seconds, Estrada, Jr., Brandon Cournay, and Lesley Garrison are the only threesome left standing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lauren Grant and Domingo Estrada, Jr. At back: Lesley Garrison. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Nick Kolin\u2019s lighting\nsaturates the backdrop with various hues. Elizabeth Kurtzman\u2019s jumpsuits vary\nin terms of color, but it\u2019s a nice surprise when at the very end of Sport<\/em>, the dancers all turn their backs\nto us to make one last golf swing, and everyone is green. Wait, though, that\u2019s\nnot the end. Noah Vinson must have missed his shot; he turns around and says, \u201cShit!\u201d\nThen the lights go out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As always, Morris makes sure we notice the dancers as individuals. Those I haven\u2019t mentioned are as memorable as those I have: Mica Bernas, Brandon Randolph, and Billy Smith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Members of MMDG in his Prelude and Prelude. <\/em>Foreground: Lauren Grant; behind her, Karlie Budge. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Prelude and Prelude<\/em>, the earliest piece on MMDG\u2019s Jacob\u2019s Pillow program, dates from 1984. The music is Henry Cowell\u2019s Set of Two for Violin and Harpsichord<\/em>, played by Gregory Valtchev on violin and Fowler on piano. As with a number of earlier dances by Morris, this two-part one is structurally simple but imaginative in its details. Nine dancers dressed alike in strappy black leotards stand in a line set on a slight diagonal on one side of the stage. They all (Karlie Budge, Estrada, Jr., Garrison, Grant, Loux, Laurel Lynch, McMurray, Minga Prather, and Sabella) hold fans\u2014blue on one side and silver on the other. Almost immediately, Loux breaks away\u2014rolls away\u2014 from the others and begins a solo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prelude and Prelude <\/em>(part 2). L to R: Domingo Estrada, Jr., Minga Prather, Karlie Budge, and Lauren Grant. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The eight people, now clustered in Jeff Pickford’s lighting, seem to have a list of ways in which to wield and turn their fans slowly and deliberately, but they may enter the sequence with a different one of the moves or perhaps even construct their sequence differently. You may see two of them doing the same gesture at the same time. Loux, meanwhile, folds his fan and holds it between his teeth. His dancing is bolder and stranger; he takes tiny little steps on tiptoe, but also takes low, wide strides or sinks into lunges. Back in 1984, as I recall, the soloist was a woman; in any case, gender plays no role in Prelude and Prelude.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The music is played twice. During the first half of the dance, I associate Loux more with the violin\u2019s song than with the piano, but then, after a blackout, the balance shifts. The other eight move toward the center of the stage and he takes their place stage left. Now rooted to the spot, he lifts and turns and lowers his fan, holding each pose while they assume his bolder moves: the deep lunges, the curling to the floor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it\u2019s the fans that make\nme think of Japan and the contrast between approved ceremonious behavior and\nanxieties and enmities that tear the guts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next work on the program comes\nas something of a shock. The excerpts from Morris\u2019s Words<\/em> are drawn from Felix Mendelssohn\u2019s many Songs Without Words<\/em>,  composed close to the middle of the 19th<\/sup>\ncentury. Valtchev and Fowler are again the musicians, and the music sings\nromantic melodies, erupts into windstorms, paces out a funeral march, and more.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As in India\u2019s Kathakali dance\ndramas, various of the ten dancers in Morris\u2019s 2014 Words<\/em> often enter and leave stage hidden behind a large,\nblack-bordered fabric sheet carried by two of their colleagues (we can usually\nsee feet walking below the sheet\u2019s bottom border). When it\u2019s pulled aside for\nthe first time, there stand Bernas and Smith ready to dance. These comings and\ngoings resonate in my mind with a magician who triumphantly whips away an\napparently empty cloth to reveal a rabbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dancers\u2014dressed in bright-colored tops and long shorts designed by former MMDG dancer Maile Okamura\u2014periodically start to enter from the wings and then think better of it. You could imagine that they don\u2019t know that part of the choreography yet, or are checking when they\u2019re supposed to come onstage. Lynch and Randolph support each other in one of the duets; Prather and Smith like the look of that and duplicate it. In the dissimilarly textured musical pieces and the way dancers are transported on and off the stage, I get the impression of a society that doesn\u2019t waste time on polite transitions. You don\u2019t get up from your elegant host\u2019s table and say goodbye and thank you. You\u2019re swallowing your last bite of pudding as the butler carries you out the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mark Morris Dance Group in Grand Duo. <\/em>Photo: Timothy Norris<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Morris, I believe, has made eight works to pieces by Lou Harrison, and he chose to end his company\u2019s Jacob\u2019s Pillow program with Grand Duo <\/em>(1993), set to four of the five parts of Harrison\u2019s mesmerizing Grand Duo for Violin and Piano<\/em>. The sections\u2019 names provide a clue of sorts: \u201cPrelude,\u201d \u201cStampede,\u201d \u201cA Round,\u201d and \u201cPolka.\u201d  You can envision people coming together for a very fierce folk dance. The fourteen MMDG dancers are dressed in satin, jewel-colored clothes by Susan Ruddie, but what they show you is tough from the outset.  They stand facing the audience, their feet wide apart, their knees bent, and their hands flat against their hips. At the Pillow, Michael Chybowski\u2019s lighting doesn\u2019t create the high beam of light that I remember stretching across the stage in an earlier performance. The dancers reach up with loose-wristed hands, either feeling for it or bathing in the memory of it. But Harrison\u2019s driving rhythms (wonderfully played by Valtchev and Fowler) call out, and they respond. They stay low, bouncing from foot to foot\u2014slapping their hips, maintaining their places in space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time they form a big\ncircle for the final \u201cPolka,\u201d you\u2019re ready to believe you\u2019re watching a ritual\nthat takes no prisoners. While they stamp out the rhythms and keep that bounce\ngoing, their arms are busy too\u2014shaking, punching the space, almost as if\nthey\u2019re scrubbing it. For a while, they sit, but keep the beat with their heads\nor by kicking a leg high.  On their feet\nagain, they remake the circle and start it spinning, but an arc of them breaks\naway and nestles into what\u2019s left of the circle (now frozen); then that arc\nrushes on while the other freezes. The splitting, minimizing, and restoring the\ncircle is impossible to describe, fascinating to watch. These dancers are not\nabout to stop. They recap their steps and gestures, form two criss-crossing\nlines, and by the time Harrison\u2019s polka is done, they\u2019ve been going for about\nfour-and-a-half non-stop minutes.  Are\nthey scaring up a storm?  Better take\ncover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[1519,2100,3174,2093,3177,120,1520,2377,3173,3178,3176,899,2092,2095,117,1252,2740,3175,2591,2097,2099],"class_list":{"0":"post-6444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-dance","8":"tag-aaron-loux","9":"tag-billy-smith","10":"tag-brandon-cournay","11":"tag-brandon-randolph","12":"tag-christina-sahaida","13":"tag-colin-fowler","14":"tag-dallas-mcmurray","15":"tag-domingo-estrada-jr","16":"tag-eric-satie","17":"tag-georgy-valtchev","18":"tag-karlie-budge","19":"tag-laurel-lynch","20":"tag-lauren-grant","21":"tag-lesley-garrison","22":"tag-mark-morris","23":"tag-mark-morris-dance-group","24":"tag-mica-bernas","25":"tag-minga-prather","26":"tag-nick-kolin","27":"tag-nicole-sabella","28":"tag-noah-vinson","29":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6444"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6471,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6444\/revisions\/6471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}