'A Lake' reviews 'Something Lies Beyond' reviews 'Foursome' reviews recent Mark Morris reviews more Renee Renouf reviews

It seems to me many years ago I saw Morris' company dance when he was still based in Seattle, the performance witnessed at the ODC Dance Gallery in the Mission District. Morris then seemed much more sombre and keenly in touch with a particular form of social and emotional desperation in the American West.

His recent work does not mine this vein of experience, but explores a wide universe of musical choices and themes, commenting on exaggerated social conventions; silliness;an insouciant capacity to romp childlike along the musical phrase in unexpected ways; standard stage patterns utilizedto skillful effect;an unerring capacity for gesture and timing; acknowledgement of folk origins and thorough going musicianship.

I did not read Jennifer Dunning's reviews of Resurrection, Morris' take on "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue", premiered at the American Dance Festival this past July. However, I picked up on Morris' capacity for giving his dancers Busby Berkeley assignments, and later reading found myself in excellent company. (It's nice to perceive independently and then discover you're in such excellent company!) Isaac Mizrahi has provided work shirts and trousers with patterns suggesting prison wear and a fall of plastic strips which the ensemble part to move forward and back. The scrim is blue with stars of varying sizes arranged in an arc. The hero kills the heroine off early in the music, spends time searching for her,while she bourrees across the stage in rigid fashion two or three times before they encounter each other again when the heroine's ghost finishes off the hero, to the mock gesture of horror by the ensemble. Watching the dancers come down stage center in pairs and parting, either singly or as couples, it suddenly was apparent not only were the dancers varied in shape and size, but so were the women's hairstyles. Morris' concern is with quality of dancing where ever it happens.

Franz Joseph Haydn's Horn Concerto#2 in D inspired Morris' A Lake, just as Schubert was the basis of A Garden, Morris' work for San Francisco Ballet. I wish A Garden had been given the faintly baroque costumes Martin Pakledinaz gave the Morris dancers, all suggesting undergarments. The use of an arm en haut, sometimes with an especially drooping hand gesture as if to suggest water drops, and the ending gestures in the low, outstretched arms, faintly emphasizing the adaptation of the arms to women's panniers and men's lace and cuffs, reflect an admirable awareness of cultural history and probably some familiarity with French baroque dance manuals.

The work was created about the same time as A Garden and it truly looks like the other side of the walnut shell. One fascinating note was Morris' use of the woman moving to the horns while the man moved to the strings, a change in typical gender assignment. The woman is supported in the final movement, lifted continually over a person. The man, I believe David Leventhal, jumping and flicking his heels, seemed to personify the word gamboling, a winsome, sunny presence,looking like the manual drawings used him as a model. Amber Merkens, one of the supporting dancers, in the charm of the period style of attitude en arriere, her intelligence awakening echoes of the late Tanaquil Le Clerq.

The premiere we got - Something Lies Beyond the Scene - was a new take on the William Walton-Edith Sitwell collaboration which Frederick Ashton mounted as Facade with Alicia Markova in the cast. I'm not at all certain Morris' take on the music is a particular improvement, but Morris, Charlton Boyd, Shawn Gannon and Marjorie Folkman did a spendid job of recitating Sitwell's particular form of Dada.

Morris provided one superb section of someone astride an elephant, dancers creating the waving ears and another twisted and swaying like the trunk. You could absolutely grasp the image of the howdah and all the pukkha sahib connotations. It is yet another piece which provides evidence of Morris' immense capacity for play, for a stripped down simplicity where it is the technique itself.

Morris took the stage once more in The Foursome, a fascinating combination of Erik Satie's 1,2 and 3 Gnossiennes and Seven Hungarian Dances by Johann Nepomuk Hummel. It is here that Morris makes the most use of gestural inflection, the eloquence of the hand, the timing of the head, and, for those of us closer to the proscenium, the focus of Morris himself. Typically, the costumes are the studied motley, nondescript variety, ranging from ballet tights to jeans and a street shirt, to Morris' ubiquituous penchant for shorts and Guillermo Resto in the standard ration of tee-shirt. The men pointed, and followed; the men stood feet forward and moved from front to side or from side to front The audience chuckled and giggled. They made an arc with their arms, bent at the hips, and, occasionally, wiggled. More howls of laughter. Morris took the hand of John Higinbotham and led him in a folk dance figure, his clasping of the hand a clear, distinct sound. Higinbotham was the definite dancer in class or rehearsal; Shawn Gannon the ordinary guy on the street; Guillermo Resto the laid back alternative lifestyle, and Morris, was simply Mark Morris.

One thing which struck me about Morris was what a formidable dancer he must have been when not carrying so much torso bulk. In the tricky rhythms of Satie, he assumed a posture and then pivoted with it into a new position with such ease I mentally gasped. The authority and command with which he focused his attention made me understand some of Morris' mastery of his material and the wealth of movement vocabulary.

Lucky Charms, danced to Divertissment of Jacques Ibert, was created in 1994 and provided the finale. It seemed to me one of the early explorations in American silliness exemplified by the costumes and seconded by the movement. The men wore sleeveless tunics of large glittering blue sequins over white trousers and the girls a range of pink and red sequins over drum majorette length swirling skirts. More stage patterns; men's bodies rolled off stage; bodies assumed a star position, romps, kicking, marching.

Morris is unafraid of popular music or main stream habit. He depicts it with the unerring accuracy of comedy, i.e. exaggerating the cliches, which makes him accessible to his audience. It also reflects his formative influences. (Interesting that he and Michael Smuin both have Montana in their formative lives.) Add to this common touch a sublime command and knowledge of music, and no way can a dance lover dismiss Mark Morris, Theatre de la Monnaie or MacArthur Fellow not withstanding, as trivial.