'L'Allegro' reviews 'Going Away Party' reviews 'All Fours' reviews 'Serenade for Guitar' reviews Morris in reviews recent Mark Morris reviews more Renee Renouf reviews

Morris demonstrates in his monumental L’Allegro, Il Pensoroso ed Il Moderato that it’s entirely possible in this day and age to experience moments of the sublime. O’Connor reminds us yes, there’s that vision, but oops, this is what confronts you outside that entrancing interior vision. They are two sides of a walnut, a pecan – pick your nut. They’re both quite nourishing.

L’Allegro is not to tour one-night stands. I cannot imagine a assembly of baroque musicians, soloists and chorus piling in and out of community concert series buses with 24 dancers. I also assert the intuition that Brussels helped make the work possible; a European setting where baroque music is not only possible, but was more available in the Eighties than in the United States. Dancers comporting themselves like figures from William Blake were then not exactly cutting edge US taste.

Adrienne Lobel’s use of color and scrim is magical. She also designs for Peter Sellars reinforces her imaginative evocation, aided by James F. Ingalls’ lighting. This fact informs us she in on the same page with today’s major theatrical innovators. Each section changes either color, position of scrim or both.

The ensembles cavort. They posture in passing like figures on Wedgwood blue or country house weekend charades, in movements evoking the surprise and delight which the most musical of Isadora Duncan’s compositions must have enthralled European audiences at the height of her creativity. Fresh breezes in their ensembles, these innocent figures sail on the crest of the beat. Each distinctive, they share a common spirit, avoiding the soloist versus corps de ballet category. The playfulness can be utterly droll. Witness the hounds sniffing for the foxes, the movement amongst the bodies assuming the role of trees or protective hedges, with witless couples riding very preoccupied with their flirtations.

Morris’ frames of reference are wide, within the larger tradition, brimming with his special wit. He loves to utilize the full body roll, whether on the back or the stomach, and gets his dancers executing these requirements right on tempo. To Handel, I don’t particular enjoy the spectacle, but he fills the phrase, whether he asking his company to imitate a passé position on their backs or to spread their legs to the beat. There is so much else which sings with clear arpeggios that I can forgive such visual farts.

Mind you, I speak of a work fifteen years past its first public performance. It could have been minted yesterday. That to me makes it classic.

September 13 I saw the program dedicated to the memory of Lou Harrison, the long-time resident of San Francisco and extended environs, who died this past March in Ohio. San Franciscans dancing in the Thirties and Forties remember him as a dancer and musician for dance, a mainstay willing to compose and participate in ensembles of modest nature, if high in purpose.

If L’Allegro is Morris at his most protean, Going Away Party to the music of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys is his minted capacity for incisive goofiness. This work also premiered in Belgium, just eighteen months after L’Allegro. Corn pone,honey, corn pone, let’s stomp around the floor a hootin’ and a hollerin’ in costumes bright and second hand in diversity, save, of course, for them boots. It’s as trippingly on the tongue as any Texas Western music can possibly permit.

Morris gave Belgium a face to the most garish and blatant fantasies of The Lone Star State they might possibly entertain. Okay, folks, this is how you think it,truthfully, this is how a lot of it just is, pre Bush family prominence. Some lyrics exude a plaintive accuracy about life, especially the lines about the burial of personal dreams, which Morris musically underscores without excessive display.

The Cal Performances commission, All Fours, to the Bela Bartok String Quartet No. 41 received its premiere at Zellerbach September 12. Yet another Morris shift, it is one of the first returns to the somber I’ve seen since I saw his smaller ensemble At ODC’s Performance Gallery before his company moved to Brussels. Handsome in black costumes designed by Martin Pakledinaz, I felt the effects of Nine Eleven lurking in many of the movements, impressively performed. I need to see it a second time before commenting at any length.

Morris himself appeared in Lou Harrison’s Serenade for Guitar, five movements demonstrating his charisma as a performer. His massive torso was encased in a white wraparound tunic, the black skirt hinting at the samurai hakama without leg division.

He walked; he skipped, paused and occasionally skimmed the stage like an angel. He also stomped and slapped his bare feet with a wicked approximation of a flamenco performance. With castanets on his thumbs, Morris echoed and accented Oren Fader’s guitar with his uncanny understanding of the timbre of Harrison’s music. I felt witness to an artist fully imbued with the transcendental Indian concept of lila.

While another Harrison piece, Grand Duo, completed the program, nothing really lingered for me from that performance beyond the power of Morris’ solo tribute “in honor of the divine Mr. Harrison.”