Mark Morris Dance Group
“The Office”, “Festival Dance”, “Socrates”
Center for the Arts, George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia
February 8, 2013
by George Jackson
copyright 2013 by George Jackson
Just like Socrates, Mark Morris is difficult to debate. He makes you persuade yourself that his is the right perspective: that Dvorak’s buoyant bagatelles call for a bizarrely eerie story, that Hummel’s efflorescent piano trio has roots in folkways plus tendrils reaching skyward, and – not least – that Plato’s dialogues can be danced. For the Dvorak work, “The Office”, Morris envisions a waiting room. Half a dozen people are there, one standing on the right while the others sit in a row on chairs. Costuming (by June Omura) and lighting (by Michael Chybowski) establish the atmosphere. It is drab. Postures and expressions, too, contribute with everyone finely tuned to a different degree of expectation or resignation. As activity arises among those waiting, it is of a follow-the-leader sort that soon becomes varied. Briefly there are dance pairings. Suddenly a different sort of figure appears: a woman meticulously groomed and severely yet fashionably dressed. She carries a clipboard, looks down at what must be noted there, summons one of the individuals waiting and takes the person away. Among those remaining, a camaraderie arises. They join in line formations, dance little steps and dare bigger ones. They are still waiting to be called and, indeed, the clipboard lady appears repeatedly. One by one those in the waiting room walk off with her. No one returns. Those left dance. Like the music, some of the dancing has folk flavor but Morris has given the movement a frantic edge that isn’t in Dvorak’s score. Finally just one person, a woman, remains on stage to be summoned. She has no one with whom to dance so she sits down on a chair to wait. Not a sound can be heard. Mark Morris has convinced me that Dvorak actually composed that final silence.
“The Office”, “Festival Dance”, “Socrates”
Center for the Arts, George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia
February 8, 2013
by George Jackson
copyright 2013 by George Jackson
Arabesques unfurling, as if the dancers were kites caught in an updraft, punctuate Morris’s choreography to Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s music. This “Festive Dance” shows Morris being a classicist even when working not for a ballet company but his own group in which several bodies diverge from the streamlined ideal. The piece begins with a clasp - a couple embracing for all it is worth. It concludes the same way and in between six male-female pairs are its building blocks. Variations on one-on-one partnerships occur and, of course, there also are passages of interplay and for larger formations. Throughout, courtly elegance and country ease interweave. Yet, for all the choreographic cleverness and contrasts and despite those celestial arabesques, this Hummel goes on too long for Morris.
The program’s big piece (with 15 dancers, lasting half an hour) was “Socrates”, Morris’s dance staging of Erik Satie’s monologue opera for tenor and piano. Excerpts from three of Plato’s dialogues are used as libretto. Not one of them, though, tackles the high dialectics in which Plato has Socrates prove his points. Satie chose to set (in French translation) Plato’s more descriptive passages. The first scene (from “the Symposium”) has Alcibiades likening Socrates to a satyr playing a flute because Socrates’ words make the heart beat faster and prompt the listener’s tears to flow. After Alcibiades’ not short exposition (which is even longer in Plato’s original), Socrates tersely thanks him and declares it is his turn now to praise the companion sitting on his other side.
Morris had Martin Pakledinas dress the dancers in short tunics, pastel in color. Some of the men are topless, and wear only the tunic “skirt”. All in the cast stand out clearly against Chybowski’s large rectangular backdrops, one light and one dark. The choreographic design starts with a figure standing on the left posed as statuary. A small, poised group appears on the right. As poses and group processionals multiply and alternate, they establish a visual dialogue that is as subtlely dynamic as a Socratic argument. A stage picture as finely balanced as a gathering carved for a temple’s frieze also emerges. As so often in opera, I couldn’t make out the sung words but the music was metric and meandering with a nasal timbre.
The second scene of “Socrates” has text from the “Phaedrus” in which Socrates and Phaedrus, wandering along an idyllic river bank, converse about nature and legend. The dark rectangular backdrop disappears and the posed figures of the first scene also vanish. Pairs appear. They are linked, joined by rope woven into double handled mats. These partners behave like Dr. Doolittle’s push-me/pull-you creature. Are they the Siamese-twin beings postulated in “The Symposium”, those that when severed are doomed to seek their other half forever? Predominantly the direction of Morris’s processionals is from right to left. Some of the groupings of figures are triangular like those for half a temple cornice.
The third and final scene suggests the death of Socrates as told in the “Phaedo”. For it the dark backdrop rejoins the light quadrangle. Images from Socrates’ last hours form and dissolve. Relieved of chains, he is able to raise his leg. He comforts his friends. He brings the cup of poison to his lips without hesitation. His body becomes numb in stages. Finally his heart stops. No single dancer is Socrates. First it is one, then another. At the end, one after another shows us that he is dead.
What one saw and heard in “Socrates” seemed both deliberate and understated. Literal and symbolic images formed and faded throughout the staging. Was there a pattern to how things repeated or varied? The piece demands to be seen again.
Socrates disparaged the body and praised the soul, the spirit. When choosing bodies for his dance company and allowing imperfections is it Morris’s aim to let us see more clearly the dancers’ souls, the pure idea of their dancing? He insists on live musicians performing for his dancers and for us.
Photo of The Mark Morris Dance Group courtesy George Mason University.
The program’s big piece (with 15 dancers, lasting half an hour) was “Socrates”, Morris’s dance staging of Erik Satie’s monologue opera for tenor and piano. Excerpts from three of Plato’s dialogues are used as libretto. Not one of them, though, tackles the high dialectics in which Plato has Socrates prove his points. Satie chose to set (in French translation) Plato’s more descriptive passages. The first scene (from “the Symposium”) has Alcibiades likening Socrates to a satyr playing a flute because Socrates’ words make the heart beat faster and prompt the listener’s tears to flow. After Alcibiades’ not short exposition (which is even longer in Plato’s original), Socrates tersely thanks him and declares it is his turn now to praise the companion sitting on his other side.
Morris had Martin Pakledinas dress the dancers in short tunics, pastel in color. Some of the men are topless, and wear only the tunic “skirt”. All in the cast stand out clearly against Chybowski’s large rectangular backdrops, one light and one dark. The choreographic design starts with a figure standing on the left posed as statuary. A small, poised group appears on the right. As poses and group processionals multiply and alternate, they establish a visual dialogue that is as subtlely dynamic as a Socratic argument. A stage picture as finely balanced as a gathering carved for a temple’s frieze also emerges. As so often in opera, I couldn’t make out the sung words but the music was metric and meandering with a nasal timbre.
The second scene of “Socrates” has text from the “Phaedrus” in which Socrates and Phaedrus, wandering along an idyllic river bank, converse about nature and legend. The dark rectangular backdrop disappears and the posed figures of the first scene also vanish. Pairs appear. They are linked, joined by rope woven into double handled mats. These partners behave like Dr. Doolittle’s push-me/pull-you creature. Are they the Siamese-twin beings postulated in “The Symposium”, those that when severed are doomed to seek their other half forever? Predominantly the direction of Morris’s processionals is from right to left. Some of the groupings of figures are triangular like those for half a temple cornice.
The third and final scene suggests the death of Socrates as told in the “Phaedo”. For it the dark backdrop rejoins the light quadrangle. Images from Socrates’ last hours form and dissolve. Relieved of chains, he is able to raise his leg. He comforts his friends. He brings the cup of poison to his lips without hesitation. His body becomes numb in stages. Finally his heart stops. No single dancer is Socrates. First it is one, then another. At the end, one after another shows us that he is dead.
What one saw and heard in “Socrates” seemed both deliberate and understated. Literal and symbolic images formed and faded throughout the staging. Was there a pattern to how things repeated or varied? The piece demands to be seen again.
Socrates disparaged the body and praised the soul, the spirit. When choosing bodies for his dance company and allowing imperfections is it Morris’s aim to let us see more clearly the dancers’ souls, the pure idea of their dancing? He insists on live musicians performing for his dancers and for us.
Photo of The Mark Morris Dance Group courtesy George Mason University.
