"Visitation", "Empire Garden" and "V"
Mark Morris Dance Group
Center for the Arts, George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia
June 12, 2010
by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson
Seeing dances by Mark Morris performed by his own company and by ballet companies is a distinctly different experience. Morris likes to have his dancers look casual and behave as if they were quite relaxed even when engaged in what might seem a formal ritual. Recurring in "V" is a theme in which the dancers file across the stage.Their steps are fairly slow and measured, like those of a processional. Yet the impression I took away was that the cast was marking the action and rehearsing its roles and not totally imitating reality. It isn't that the dancers stint on energy, not at all, but there remains in the personas projected a core of privacy, of individuality. I suspect Morris goes to great lengths to select and train his dancers so that they do not look stretched, streamlined, turned-out and absolutely immersed in let's pretend. This scruple for not violating the performer's self Morris inherited from the Judson Church generation that is among his artistic ancestors. Unlike the Judson, though, spurts and bursts of bravura occur in Morris's choreography for his company. It may actually be harder to deliver beats, leaps or turns off the cuff than execute them with balletic preparation and precision. No question, though, that behind the "ordinary people" look of the Mark Morris Dance Group a purpose exists that is extraordinary. The architecture of Morris's choreography also disturbs canonical rules.
Entrances and exits are considered cheap tools for generating choreographic excitement. Morris revels in them. There was continual coming and going in all three pieces on the program. It was done, though, with a sense of fun or for surprise. Sometimes it happened with structure in mind, for as casual as Morris wants to appear in many respects, he is a stickler for form. Take the idea of the duet. In the romantic "V" (to Robert Schumann's Opus 44 Quintet) with its rounded arm motions, sweeping runs and crawl refrains, duet intimacy also seems called for. A duet starts but is interrupted by the entrance of other dancers. Not just any dancers, though, for the intruders pair off too. The initial couple, its privacy disturbed, exits but reappears to resume its intimate, yet rather grand dialog. Again, intruders appear but this time they clearly reflect the duo. Morris makes what happens in Schumann's music (harmonious, melodic surging - but not an uninterrupted surge) visible in an amplified, richer way than if he had given us a straightforward pas de deux.
"V", which presumably stands for the "5" of Schumann's quintet unless the alphabet letter V is meant because love's victory can be read into the action, is very blue and palely green as dressed by Martin Pakledinaz. The two colors, and the dancers who wear one or the other, pair strikingly. Morris deploys two 7-dancer teams, that are sometimes subdivided into 3s and 4s as well as couples.Balletomanes seem to prefer this piece to the other two because Morris develops his relaxed style of movement clearly and it is tempting to imagine the sequences translated for ballet dancers.
"Empire Garden" reminded me of "Petrouchka". At times Morris has his dancers move like a fairground crowd and at other times as if they might be puppets. The stylizations are rather cubistic, which suits the bright colors and sharp patterns of Elizabeth Kurtzman's costumes more than Charles Ives's violin-cello-piano trio which isn't quite as modern age. "Visitation", to Beethoven (the 4th cello-piano sonata of Opus 102, #1) has dancing that proceeds perhaps from a notion such as "the individual and the group", with Maile Okamura as the prime individual. A casual appearance with inventive emphases, entrances and exits in abundance, and care in approximating formal groupings are aspects of Morris modern that seem prominent. I wanted something more and on first acquaintance didn't find it. Kurtzman's costumes were simple and somber.
The classical music to which Morris choreographs is formal and his company dances to live and lively accounts of the scores, on this occasion by Wolfram Koessel (cello), Colin Fowler (piano), Jesse Mills (violin), Gregory Valtchev (violin) and Daniel Panner (viola). This June 12 performance by the Mark Morris Dance Group and its Music Ensemble replaced those scheduled for last February 5 and 6, which were canceled due to predicted blizzard conditions.
