Mark Morris Makes Mozart Dance This Weekend
Mozart Dances, Mark Morris Dance Group photo
It feels like the dance event of the year--three performances of Mozart Dances by the Mark Morris Dance Group at the Paramount, this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (tickets: $35-$75 plus fees). See the preview video here.
Roger Downey's preview proclaims: "It is, more than any dance work I have ever encountered, a kind of commentary, a shared record of one artist's astonished and grateful discovery of another." (In the NYT, Alastair Macaulay sounds let down that Morris's choreography doesn't rise to Mozart's virtuosity, while still calling it a "rich theatrical experience.")
Mark Morris himself was interviewed by PNB's Peter Boal at the downtown Seattle Public Library last night, and while he didn't want to discuss the work in detail--"If you need 15 pages of program notes for a 5-minute dance, just skip the dance and read the notes"--you got a good sense of how he uses an unpredictable, jarring levity to say things many people don't want to hear.
Born in Seattle, Morris went to Franklin High School, and in earlier days used to get stoned and attend the Compline at St. Mark's; you wouldn't find him within miles of a church now: "I'm a deeply, deeply anti-religious man."
(Laughter)
That may have accounted for a digression about how Berkeley audiences love the idea of a Mark Morris work so much, they over-respond. Everything is funny. He suspects maybe they're tripping on something.
(Laughter)
Did he miss dancing himself, Boal asked. "My foot hurts," Morris replied at first, then went on to explain that a dancer is on average about 26 years old. "I'd look like that scary guy outside the playground." When you're younger, you warm up for five minutes and dance two hours; at his age you warm up for two hours and dance five minutes. But that said, because of his obsession with music, he does like to conduct his work. (Morris famously insists on live music whenever possible.) "It's the opposite of performing--you're facing the wrong way."
We can't remember why Morris brought up Jack Benny, but he did, then halted, placed his hand on his cheek in perfect imitation of Benny's trademark look of thoughtful judgment, and said, "Jack Benny, anyone?" to make sure people understood the reference. (Moral: If you're not sure they get it, check.)
Boal touched on Morris's appearance on New York's post-Balanchine dance scene in 1984 (the moment "I was taken as seriously as I take myself"), his three-year excursion to Brussels to direct dance at Director of Dance, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (artistically and financially rewarding--"Oh my god, health insurance!"--but "homophobic, xenophobic--about every kind of -ophobic--the police used to stop me on the street, so I stayed in my apartment a lot," "It felt like 1952" socially), and his return to New York.
Likes: Baroque, early classical, some 20th-century music, jazz before 1942 (though he's learning to appreciate later works), opera (for the "scale, emotional depth, and madness"), collaborating with equally driven artists (people who can handle a brusque, "Yo-Yo, you're early!" or "Misha, you're on the wrong foot...again")
Adores about Seattle: the Olmsted Brothers-designed Arboretum, Minoru Yamasaki's architectural design for the Seattle Science Center, and Rem Koolhaas' design for the Seattle Public Library. (To which Boal added that it helped him make his choice to come to Seattle, thinking that any city that was willing to produce such a landmark architectural work for a library had its priorities in the right place.)
Cultural advice for Seattle: "Enough with the salmon!"
