Mark Morris' Mozart Dances

(Mark Morris bows with the company after Mozart Dances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.)

SUN, OCT 21 - Mark Morris Dance Group was here last weekend (I've been sitting on this review for awhile), performing Morris' latest large-scale work, Mozart Dances. Danced to three Mozart piano works - the 11th and 27th piano concertos, and the four-hand piano sonata - it was a constantly moving, at times whimsical visualization of Mozart. I think the best word to Morris' choreography here is "flowy" (not a real word, I know, but work with me here). Through the whole evening, Morris' dances flowed over the Mozart music in a seemingly effortless way, like a long ribbon of cloth zipping through the wind. It helped a lot that the music was being played so well: Garrick Ohlson and Yoko Nozaki are well-known concert pianists in their own right, more used to being the center of attention on the stage rather than in the pit. But Mark Morris has always made a point of hiring the best musicians to play the music that accompanies his work, and music plays a very important role in his choreography. With the sound coming from the pit being so strong, bright and lush, my delight in the stage happenings may have been influenced as well.

(Garrick Ohlson and Yoko Nozaki.)

Patterns and phrases scurried along with the speed of the Mozart. In fact, one of the things that I liked best about the piece overall was the way that ideas and movements poured with visual ease onto the stage, each successive movement appearing in a way that you'd think "oh wow, of course that's the next logical step." (Though of course, only Morris could have put it together that way.) Mozart's music flows with much the same aural ease; of course that key change would fall naturally next, etc etc. (I strongly disagree with Chris Pasles' LA Times review where he writes that Morris was working against the music - I had one of those "were we at the same show?" moments when I was reading that review. Perhaps one might say that Morris is too literal in spots, but Pasles writes "The pieces fit only because the music was chopped up and little attention was paid to its lyrical or emotional content." We certainly saw things very, very differently.)

That said, certain sections worked better than others. The evening is divided into three sections, each one essentially its own one-act dance work, though certain movements keep reoccuring (falling to the floor and flopping forward like a seal, or having a dancer appear trace a leaf with his/her hand as it zigzags down from the sky). The first part, titled "Eleven" and set to the Piano Concerto No. 11, acts as a visual primer for the evening: the piece is mostly danced by the women (the men start the piece off briefly, in the orchestral introduction, but then leave the stage for the rest of the piece). Here's where the visual sense of "flowiness" comes in, as the choreography literally flowed across the stage with the girls' dresses trailing behind. The audience gets introduced to the way Morris uses the music, and we also get used to his way of using the stage space: main action occuring with a solo dancer center stage, then a few dancers hop out of the wings to breifly illustrate a musical aside before we return to the main programming - or a formation that builds once, deconstructs, than rebuilds with a larger group of dancers when the same musical theme reappears. Nevertheless, not much memorably emerges from this section.

(The 'switching hand' pose that I attempt to describe in the next paragraph. Photo: Stephanie Berger.)

The second part, "Double," is where the choreography really comes into focus. This was my favorite section, with the most interesting, surprising and satisfying choreography of the evening. Set to the Piano Sonata in d minor for two pianos, "Double" is danced by the company's men (the women make a cameo in the second movement), the choreography moves with the same kind of musical impulse as "Eleven", but some of that "flowiness" turns into much more forceful movements and statements: a hand stretching up over the head, like half of a windmill exercise, that gets switched from side to side before the dancer leans backward to match the climax of the music; this returns with more and more successive dancers as the theme builds. The slow movement includes a kind of ring-around-the-rosy circle that grows, collapses and intertwines. Watching this visual game is interesting enough in and of itself, but it fits so wonderfully well inside of the music that it really becomes a great bit in the work. There is also a sense of humor to the steps in "Double": when a fun-sounding musical tangent appears, Morris throws in a silly turned in pose here, an odd leap from the wings there - not necessarily a laugh out loud funny moment, but your eyes chuckle.

The third section, "Twenty-seven," set to Piano Concert No. 27, ties a ribbon on the evening's package. The full company dances this one dressed in white, and we get a bit of that wind-blown flowiness of Part 1, but also the clearness Part 2 - both the men and the women partake. Movements reappear from earlier in the work, to clever re-use. And the choreographic humor reaches a climax at the same time the Piano Concerto hits its musical climax - a males dancer takes a flying run across the stage and hurls himself into the arms of another male dancer - a big giant bear hug.

I personally found the evening very fun and engaging, and loved the visual surprises that Morris drew from the music. I have noticed that the piece is not for everyone: while I still don't get what Pasles was writing about in the LA Times about Mozart's anti-musicallity, a friend at work found the evening boring, but not because it was unmusical. On the contrary: she found it so involved in the music that it became too esoteric for her as a non-classical music listener. She wanted more visible dance technique, and found all the scurrying, circling and walking too pedestrian, even if it was musical. I'm fascinated that such different responses came from the same evening (even if I strongly disagreed with the published, so-called "authority" opinion).

I guess all I can really say for it is that I had a great time myself, bringing my all my classical music watching and previous Morris viewings with me to the theater that night. And I'm glad to have found a copy of the PBS broadcast to revisit a few sections of the choreography again later!

Morris & Co will be back in April to perform Dido and Aeneas, an opera, at the Irvine Barclay Theatre - the event looks fascinating. There is also a May date scheduled for Santa Barbara, with repertory TBA.

*

Next major dance in town is Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal at UCLA next weekend. Oh, and my calf muscles hurt from two days of (beginning) ballet class. I'm such a wimp.