Mark Morris Dance Group: July 23, 2025

Stephanie and I saw the Mark Morris Dance Group at the Joyce Theater on July 23, 2025. 

It was a mixed bag of four pieces, one of them quite old, one of them brand new, the other two in the middle. It was interesting to see such a broad span of Morris's work in one evening, to see how his style has developed and how some elements have been there since the beginning.

We had a couple of celebrity sightings! We got there early and saw Mark Morris himself sitting on a stairway by the stage door, smoking and lost in thought. Totally on brand. We waved at him and he waved back. Stephanie spotted the one and only Wallace Shawn, what a thrill to see him. And I saw Kate Valk, a founding member of the wacko downtown theatre troupe The Wooster Group and the leading lady in almost every piece I've seen of theirs. I had a warm little exchange on our way out, telling her how much I admire her work. She asked my name, I always think that's a sign of good manners from a celebrity. She's from Spokane so I shouldn't be surprised.

*The Argument* (1999)

Music: Robert Schumann, *Five Pieces in a Folk Style* for cello and piano

This work for six dancers showed off Morris's genius for creating variety - - he'd have all six dancers onstage, then a duet, then a solo. Always something interesting to watch, always deeply musical and expressive. The most interesting thing about this piece was the way the choreography was tied to the music, yet not. The music is often built in four-bar phrases and the dancing is also in four-bar phrases but the rhythms within those units did not mirror the musical rhythms. That kept the dancing from being too literal.

*Northwest* (world premiere)

Music: John Luther Adams, *Five Athabascan Dances and Five Yup'ik Dances* for harp and percussion

(Morris chose to use only three of the five Athabascan dances)

The music and the choreography were equally fascinating. Adams wrote in the program notes that the pieces are in a sense arrangements of melodies by the Athabascan and Yup'ik people of Alaska. The writing for the harp was wonderfully intricate and colorful - - none of the glamorous arpeggios that I think of when I think of the harp, it felt like he was reimagining what the harp can do. The percussion part was minimal but essential.

The dancing was grounded in a way that made the rest of the evening feel light as air. The ten dancers created their own music with their heavy footfalls. It made me think of tap dancing, where the sound of the taps makes a counterpoint to the music, only in this case it was the THUMP of the feet on the floor. Stephanie made a special note of the gorgeous lighting in this piece (by Mike Faba), rich and intense colors, again unlike anything on the rest of the program. The lighting really heightened the impact of the piece.

*Ten Suggestions* (1981)

Music: Alexander Tcherepnin, *Bagatelles, opus 5* for piano

This was a solo piece done by one of our favorite dancers, Dallas McMurray. The MMDG is celebrating their 45th anniversary this year and I'm sure it was a deliberate choice to program a piece from their second year. It was an interesting counterpart to the first piece because in this early piece the rhythms of the dance were closely tied to the rhythms in the music, but always in an inventive way, never clunky or too literal. I'll give you one example of this. One movement was a gentle waltz and McMurray gave a step on beat two of each measure, in a way that was effortless and always embedded in a larger set of movements. It didn't illustrate the music but somehow invisibly embodied it.

We picked up on a couple of influences in this piece. Stephanie saw a Chaplin influence with the whimsical and character-based use of movement and subtle bits of pantomime. I picked up on a Beckett flavor, a sense that the man was trying to find something to do, something to animate his day. And one sequence, with McMurray using a hoop, showed a Diaghilev influence with the profile posing.

*Going Away Party* (1990)

Music: songs by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys

Morris built his brand on nearly always setting his dances to music that was being performed live. This piece was one of only a handful of exceptions in my experience - - I've seen MMDG somewhere between 15 and 20 times in the last 23 years and I can only remember one other piece that used recorded music (a solo piece that McMurray did to Indian music a few years ago). I don't mind canned music when the music is this great! Clearly I need to do a deep dive into Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, those songs were sensational. The crooning, the fiddles, the slide guitar, the strong and danceable beat, it was all thrilling.

The dancing was delightful with a stealthy undercurrent of drama. It was done for seven dancers, three male/female couples and one extra guy who represented the occasional heartache in the songs. The dancing sometimes used square dance iconography, but off kilter since one of the four couples was a single. And we got a nice dose of the Mark Morris cheekiness, sometimes verging on raunchy. But never coarse, always from a place of whimsy and high spirits.