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 Big, Beefy Mark Morris Isn't Your Typical Genius Dancer. By Margaret Regan CHOREOGRAPHER MARK MORRIS found himself a hop, skip north of a hurricane last week. "It's very windy and strange and weird," he reported by telephone from northern Florida, where the edges of Hurricane Georges were whipping the fronds off the palms. Nevertheless, he was confident there would be no evacuation. The Mark Morris Dance Group was ready to perform, and when Morris is ready to dance, not even a hurricane would dare to dissent. Booked into the UA's Centennial Hall for a concert next Wednesday, October 7, the troupe has taken the dance world by, well, storm. Morris, a 42-year-old native of Seattle, is routinely called not only "the most important choreographer of his generation," but "one of the foremost artists in the United States." He's created more than 90 dances for his own company, danced with such luminaries as Lar Lubovitch and Eliot Feld, founded the White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov, and collaborated with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He even did a three-year stint in Brussels as director of dance for the Belgian national opera house.
Brought up on flamenco and Japanese dance and Balkan folk and ballet and modern, Morris founded his company as a youngster of 24 in New York City. Since then his dancers have regularly transfixed audiences with a joyful style of dance that seamlessly mixes the classical discipline of a Balanchine with the frenetic joviality of folk. "Grand Duo," one of the four works on next week's program, has left at least one New York audience "howl(ing) with joy," as critic Joan Acocella wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Danced by a wild corps of 14, critics have called it a tribal celebration. "It looks ancient-ish," Morris agreed. "It's very dancey and very strenuous. It's set to a thrilling score by a composer I love, Lou Harrison." The music is very much to the point. The Harrison score is played live on stage by a violinist and pianist, the duo of the title. Morris insists on live music at every concert, for every piece, a rarity in a dance world where performers too often move to canned music. He considers himself a musician, who just happens not to be an "instrumentalist." "I always wanted to use live music," he said. "It's very important to me. Some funds (grants) come directly for live music. It's worth it. It's expensive and difficult, of course. But it's a real show, with all live performers and a live audience." Early-music lovers have been known to come to his concerts more for the music than the dance. His beloved Baroque music, originally composed for the stately court dances of Europe, requires singers to join the musicians. "I Don't Want to Love," a 1996 work for seven dancers that's also on the Centennial Hall program, is set to "some small-scale madrigals by Monteverdi, all concerned with aspects of love." The Artek Singers--two tenors, a bass and a soprano --sing the songs in Italian, and an early-instrument ensemble called 458 Strings plays on the guitar, harpsichord and theorbo.
"It's based on material Schubert wrote. John took fragments and re-imagined them." Morris himself dances a solo in "Three Preludes," to Gershwin music played by pianist Ethan Iverson. "It's from the early '90s. I haven't done it for a while. I have a new pianist and a new artistic director, and I wanted to do it again with them." Many of his dancers have been with the troupe at least 10 years, and some go all the way back to its beginnings in 1980. Morris doesn't much concern himself with his dancers growing older, or himself, for that matter. He performs in every single concert. "I'm not interested in a youth fixation," he said with a trace of irritation. "Everyone gets older. If you've been dancing with me 10 years, that means you're gonna be 10 years older. That should mean that you're a better artist." Master of high and low, Morris disdains no sources (a Morris Nutcracker, called The Hard Nut, was set in the tacky 1960s) and he continues to generate new dances at an extraordinary rate. Right now, he said, he has works planned well into the next century. "I hope I do different kinds of work every time I do work. That's my job! I create dances."
The Mark Morris Dance Group performs at Morris leads a free discussion, Unlocking the Creative Process, at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 6, also in Room 102 of the CESL Building. THE MARK MORRIS Dance Group's concert on Wednesday is just the endpoint to a week filled with dance. Local favorite Orts Theatre of Dance has three concerts this weekend, and Le Ballet National du Senegal does a single show on Thursday. The touring Senegalese troupe has been dancing the traditional dances of West Africa since its founding in 1960, retrieving athletic movements from the village for concert audiences around the world. Dancers wear the brilliant-colored cottons of Africa, and an ensemble of musicians plays drums and other indigenous instruments. Pangols is a full-length work about the spiritual relationship between people and the land. UApresents promoters promise "a recreation of a legendary dance competition from Guinea, acrobatics and stilt walking and...dances from the ancient African empire of Mali." Le Ballet National du Senegal performs at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 1, at UA Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd. Tickets are at the box office for $16, $22. Kids under 18 get in for half price, and UA faculty and staff get a 20-percent discount. Barbea Williams, Tucson's own proponent of African dance, gives a free pre-concert talk at 6:45 p.m. in Room 102 of the Center for English as a Second Language, north of Centennial Hall. For more information, call 621-3341. Orts revs up its 15th season with Deep Recesses--Wide Expanse, a concert packed with four new works--two of them on trapezes--and one reprise from last season. Artistic director Anne Bunker collaborated with UA dance prof Melissa Lowe on "Window on the Woods," a duet the pair performs to contemporary Celtic music. Inspired by both women's love of Scotland, the piece "tumbled out of us" this summer, Bunker said, after she got back from a residency in Ireland and a trip to Scotland. Company member Charles Thompson continues the Celtic theme with "The Tithe," a work for six dancers based on legends of the Irish and Scottish fairy folk. The music, however, is by Franz Liszt. Trapeze maven Robert Davidson premieres "Ave Maria," a trapeze duet for Bunker and Thompson, set to choral music. Longtime Orts-er Beth Braun presents "Lady Sorrowfree," a new work for six, danced to marimba and violin. "It's bittersweet but freeing," Bunker said, "with happiness winning out over the bitterness." Braun repeats "Life Rhythms," a joyful piece for six that the company danced in last winter's concert. The other premiere, a trapeze work, is Bunker's "www.peeps.com," a "light frolic with assorted props--large hats and black hoops." The trapeze piece for eight, danced to an electronic musical collage, is "a sophisticated Dr. Seuss."
Orts Theatre of Dance performs at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday,
October 2 and 3, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, October 4, at the PCC
Proscenium Theatre, 2202 W. Anklam Road. Tickets at the door
are $12 general, $10 for students and seniors; kids 14 and under
get in free with an adult, with a limit of two kids per adult.
Advance tickets, available at Antigone Books, Bentley's, Silverbell
Trading and through Orts, are $2 off. For more information call
Orts at 624-3799, or e-mail them at orts@rtd.com.
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This MacArthur genius is not your typical lean dancer, either.
Big and beefy, he has a cascade of black curls that make him look
like he's stepped out of a painting from the Baroque, a period
whose music, incidentally, he adores. But his elaborate, disorderly
appearance, and enfant terrible rep, transmute into gloriously
eclectic dance on stage.
"Medium," a brand-new work for six dancers, is played
by violin, viola, cello and piano. The composer is John Harbison,
but the music was inspired by Schubert.
