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The leap from modern to classical
Choreographer Mark Morris brings his unique blend to Chicago
By Sid Smith
Tribune arts critic
Published March 28, 2004
When people talk of Mark Morris, they talk in superlatives.
"Our Mozart of modern dance," says one critic, and "the most prodigiously gifted choreographer of the post-Balanchine era" in the words of another.
Helen Wallace, editor of the BBC Music Magazine, writes, "Mark Morris has done more to revive interest in . . . classical music than any conductor or musician of the last 20 years."
Classical music? But isn't modern dance Morris' forte?
"His is the broadest of spectrums," says fellow choreographer and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago artistic director Jim Vincent, who was working in the Netherlands during Morris' stint in Belgium in the late '80s. "He can be formal, quiet, serene, traditional and, most of all, unpredictable. He never delivers what is expected."
Morris' unique treatment of classical music and modern dance will be on display here when the Mark Morris Dance Group performs at the Museum of Contemporary Art Thursday through April 4.
"He is deeply in love with dance and music, and it shows," says Peter Taub, director of performance at the MCA . "I view him as a restless explorer. He takes a lot of risks."
Arguably no other choreographer of our time is so celebrated, discussed or revered. The Seattle-born wunderkind, once an enfant terrible of sorts and now, at 47, an established master, is as much a pied piper of music as of dance.
When asked about the renowned musicality in his work, he suggests the trait is unavoidable, noting, "As far as I can understand it, everywhere in the world dancing comes from music. That has been true for centuries, with the only possible exception of the last 40 years," a reference to the silence and mechanistic sound effects of much modern dance. As for himself, "That's why I like to dance, as a result of music. I like music, and I like different kinds of music. I always have.
"That's what keeps me interested in the job."
His extraordinary dance vocabulary is arguably matched only by his breadth of musical tastes. He began, in a way, in two different dance and musical worlds, simultaneously studying Spanish folk arts (after he saw a Jose Greco concert at age 8) and classical ballet. Thus began an eclecticism so vital to his eventual role as versatile post-modern experimentalist, though he, not surprisingly, rejects labels.
Flamenco and Balinese folk dance are among his influences; in his teens, he performed with a Balkan folk troupe. Mozart, Handel, Gluck, John Adams ("Nixon in China") and Michele Shocked are among the composers used in his dances. In fact, he has crafted work to more than 50 composers, including plentiful works performed to compositions for voice. His large-scale, 1988 masterpiece, "L'Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato," is set to Handel's oratorio, followed in 1989 by a danced version of Henry Purcell's opera, "Dido and Aeneas."
"I probably do more work to vocal music than most, but then a lot of choreographers don't use serious music at all," he says, implying that's fine with him too. "Vocal music has always appealed to me. I like to sing. Singers and dancers are closely allied, in my view."
The program on tap at the MCA includes a special work from last year, "Serenade," dedicated to the late composer Lou Harrison and performed as a solo by Morris himself. Though from separate generations -- Harrison was 86 when he died last year -- they shared reputations as rebellious innovators and multicultural stylists. Harrison, synthesizer of Eastern and Western music, also worked with John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Ned Rorem.
"I choreographed to Lou's music many times," Morris says. "He was a darling doll and a good friend. I was working on this solo when he died, and so naturally it became a tribute."
Other features
The program will also feature "A Spell" (1993), set to John Wilson, a trio "for a nymph, a shepherd and Cupid"; "V," set to Robert Schumann's "Quintet in E Flat"; and "Going Away Party," first performed in Chicago in 1991 by the White Oak Project, which Morris co-founded with Mikhail Baryshnikov.
That tie to ballet, plus his facility with ultra-modern music a la Harrison, represents just one of the complexities so tantalizing about Morris' work. He has said that two of the artists he most admires are Balanchine and Cunningham, geniuses by the reckoning of almost everybody, to be sure, but geniuses at opposite ends of the dance spectrum.
"It's all dancing, as far as I'm concerned," he says. "There's good or bad dance, not modern or neoclassical or post-modern. I think Merce's work is extremely musical, just as Balanchine's is beautiful and exciting."
Worlds of difference
But then he also rejects any simplistic blurring of the boundaries. "They are different techniques," he adds. "When I work in ballet, I work in the language of ballet. Though that's part of my company's language, that's not generally the case with modern dancers." References are one thing, in other words. The two worlds technically are by no means interchangeable. "Classical ballet dancers are highly specialized," Morris adds. "It's true, maybe, that the days of the Martha Graham wars of modern versus ballet are over. But there are still worlds of difference. They're separate strands."
For years, there was an aura of controversy around his work. In the Belgium days, Vincent remembers frequent press references to Morris as "the bad boy." "He pokes so much fun at tradition," Vincent says. "In `The Hard Nut' [Morris' take on `The Nutcracker'], he put a man in drag on point, arguably some of the worst feet I've seen on toe shoes."
But now, thanks in part to his efforts, that once iconoclastic humor is mainstream. Morris dismisses bluntly past labels with a one-word, unprintable synonym for cow manure.
"It was insulting and a point of condescension to keep my work from being taken seriously," he says. "I'm direct and honest and perhaps, in my olden days, more politically strident. But my work is serious and classically built and deliberate.
"Everything I do is deliberate," he says. "People sometimes assume if you choose to be funny, your work isn't serious. That's an idiotic and limited way of looking at people."
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
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