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Artistic Director
Mark Morris
General
Director
Barry Alterman
Executive
Director
Nancy Umanoff
Dancers
Joe Bowie
Charlton Boyd
Marjorie Folkman
Shawn Gannon
Lauren Grant
John Heginbotham
David Leventhal
Bradon McDonald
Amber Merkens
Gregory Nuber
Maile Okamura
June Omura
Guillermo Resto
Matthew Rose
Anne Sellery
Julie Worden
Michelle Yard
Performances
I Don't
Want to Love
Choreography
Mark Morris
Music
Claudio
Monteverdi
Costumes
Isaac Mizrahi
Peccadillos
Choreography
Mark Morris
Music
Erik Satie
Grand Duo
Choreography
Mark Morris
Music
Lou Harrison
Grand Duo for Piano
and Violin
Costumes
Susan Ruddie
V
Choreography
Mark Morris
Music
Robert
Schumann
Quintet in E flat for piano and strings
op. 44
Costumes
Martin Pakledinaz
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Sadler's
Wells
16 - 20
October 2001
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When the Dance
Heritage Coalition asked the artists
whom they had labelled "America's
Irreplaceable Dance Treasures"
to "sum up their legacies and say
how they might explain their work to
an audience fifty years from now,"
plenty of dancers and choreographers
took the opportunity to record a lofty
statement of artistic intent. Not Mark
Morris. "Since I will most probably
be dead in 50 years," he said,
"I am happy to imagine thousands
of 75-year-olds who will still be in
love after meeting on a blind date at
one of my shows when they were young."
Morris has always
joined high-art purpose with a refusal
to take himself too seriously. One project
complements the other: revolutionary
choreography can be as unexpectedly
fun as a good blind date. And aesthetic
pleasure, like falling in love, might
answer graver doubts. After September
11th, the Mark Morris Dance Group –
which is based in Brooklyn – decided
to present a special American preview
of its new work, V, which had its official
premiere here in London on Tuesday night.
The piece does not respond directly,
of course, to anything political; its
performance was simply "an offering,"
Morris said.
The
evening's progress toward that gift
starts with I
Don't Want to Love. Set
to Monteverdi madrigals, it begins simply,
with six men and women in breezy white
costumes skipping, twirling, running,
moving their partners along in skim-the-floor
lifts, or launching themselves into
deliberately square turning jumps. Emotions
deepen through six subsequent songs.
Sometimes choreography illustrates the
text, and sometimes the dancers almost
mime; but part of the audience's fun
comes from spotting bits of movement
quotation from all over the place that
Morris fits into a whole. It is his
understanding of the music, of course,
that makes the puzzle pieces lock. At
one moment in the "Lamento della
ninfa" section, the best part of
the ballet, a woman soloist slowly extends
a bent leg while a group of dancers
pace a steadier lament around her: suddenly,
the musical conversation between sung
melody and instrumental accompaniment
is clearer to the audience, and more
complex.
Peccadillos
only seems slight.
Morris created this solo for himself
last year; it is wonderful to see him
dance it. Set to Erik Satie, the piece
begins in a childlike dream world, where
everything (beginning with the piano)
is slightly wrong but still makes sense,
and the dancer can imagine himself becoming,
among other fantasies, a clock, a machine,
or a gorilla beating his chest. Clapping
and snapping emphasise the correspondence
of music and dancer here. But just half
a measure of missed synchronicity changes
the mood; suddenly, the body has aged,
the imagination has weakened, the steps
are resistant rather than playful. Delight
returns, however, in the piece's final
movement, when the choreography's hard-fought
exuberance can go beyond the exactitude
of the opening section. In this piece,
timing can defeat time.
More
somber in its discoveries, Grand
Duo begins
with fourteen dancers on stage, moving
through slow, deliberate stretching
and placement of limbs. The choreography
keeps this single-mindedness through
the four sections of Lou Harrison's
score: often, the dancers seem to work
at staying insensible of those nearby,
yet their movements coordinate perfectly
with others. Morris can be bravely literal:
the "Stampede" section has
groups of dancers rushing at one another,
barely avoiding collisions, and in "A
Round" lines of men and women twirl
themselves into winding and unwinding
spirals. But with patterns of group
repetition, basics gain atavistic force.
The dancers hop, slap their pelvises,
pump flexed legs, roll around on the
floor. At one point, we see only a ring
of men and women sitting on the stage,
rhythmically nodding their heads, and
the effect is visceral and overwhelming;
it seems like a recovered religious
ritual rather than a theatrical choice.
The force of moments like this one makes
Grand Duo
more powerful with
each viewing.
Community
has been a constant theme for Morris,
and Grand
Duo keeps this
focus on the group, examining not only
the redemption but also the brutality
possible when people dance together.
V,
the premiere, balances both possibilities.
It is more romantic than other pieces
on this program, and more serious; it
avoids the severity of Grand
Duo and
the obvious wit of I
Don't Want to Love and Peccadillos
(both of which
can have the audience laughing out loud).
It is rigorously plotless, with no direct
thematic suggestions. But it has a greater
breadth and a more finely-calibrated
range of feeling than the rest of the
evening. Two groups of seven dancers,
one in bright blue and one in pale green,
dance in warm light. (The lighting for
the whole program, by Michael Chybowski,
is excellent.) The allegro opening section
uses several movements Morris makes
into themes, including an open-and-shut
pulse of the arms that first encloses
the air in front of each dancer, then
reaches outward as if asking for something.
The second section begins as multiple
pas de deux,
but Morris complicates
things with a line of dancers creeping
across the stage to Schumann's march
theme: This row of crawling, then walking,
bodies works like an animated evolution
chart, and its inevitability frames
the off-balance tenderness of the romantic
couples. V
uses both as its
final two sections build greater and
greater energy. The allegro,
ma non troppo conclusion
has dancers darting on and off stage
for surprisingly balletic solos, jammed
with beats, darts, and spins, before
the ending finds pairs and groups again.
And when the dancers come together,
it is with a series of choreographed
embraces that fulfill the pulsing arms
and reach of the opening section. Morris
shows what the music, and his steps,
promised from the beginning: well-made
dancing answers its questions without
condescending or seeming predictable.
V
is a beautiful
and important work.
Siobhan
Peiffer |
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