by Leigh Witchel
Is a dance still interesting with the music turned off? It’s a useful test: choreography shouldn’t just respond to music, but have ideas of its own in parallel to it. Mark Morris Dance Group’s first visit to The Joyce Theater brought a mix of old and new works, and sometimes these passed this test. Sometimes they didn’t.
The evening opened with “Tempus Perfectum,” which was made in 2021 and originally livestreamed, with the dancers wearing masks. This is its stage debut, and it had been unmasked. One day – maybe it’s already happened – some doctoral students are going to do their theses on the choreography of the pandemic.
As many works in the pandemic, “Tempus Perfectum” used a small cast, a quartet, and was heavy on solos, perhaps to minimize potential infections during rehearsal. Morris used the suite of Brahm’s waltzes that Ashton dipped into for his Isadora Duncan waltzes. As is Morris’ preference, there was live music, except for the final work.
After Courtney Lopes did her solo, Karlie Budge entered with her foot deliberately sickled, as if Morris was making fun of us for looking at line. Even so, when he did use lines, they felt unfulfilled on his dancers. It was when Budge cranked up the volume of her movement, sending her leg high or really bending over, that things became interesting.
The solos continued on. Dallas McMurray stomped as the piano repeated a crescendo before the piece went beyond single dancers. Noah Vinson, McMurray, and Budge strolled and jumped before Lopes reentered. Morris built a duet for the men out of walking arm in arm, while putting their hands in front of their faces. They then put their outstretched hand above their heads, like Balanchine’s Siren in “The Prodigal Son.” If there’s one thing Morris knows, it’s his references.
Morris used the waltz Ashton used for Duncan scattering rose petals, and he echoed that right after, when McMurray gathered up something imaginary and tossed it upwards. With Morris, it’s safe to assume no quote is accidental. The section ended in a handstand.
Morris’ solo for Vinson was more academic: reverence, pas de chat. After a hearty solo for Lopes, the men returned and brought back the Siren hands. Morris set the best-known of the waltzes with McMurray, Budge and Lopes gesturing grandly, arms held high. Vinson reentered, doing balancés, and in unison, Morris built a larger waltz from earlier movement, ending at the original pose.
This was a pandemic dance, not a magnum opus, but it didn’t feel as if Morris was digging into either the music or the movement. The vocabulary was either stretchy-posy, or the kind of music visualization that divides audiences about Morris. “Tempus Perfectum” could be Morris’ take on Duncan’s style of musical embodiment, but largely it felt like another nest of mixing bowls.
From 2003, “All Fours” dealt, unsurprisingly, with quartets. The Aeolus Quartet played Bartók’s fretful Quartet No. 4. A fretful octet of dancers, all in shades of black, moved in tight formation. Right on the music, everyone jumped upwards with their hands clasped as if praying. Martin Pakledinaz’s simple costumes were divided by gender, but Morris didn’t choose to differentiate. Often he’d make a quartet of three women and one man doing the same steps. But for someone who doesn’t use much partnering, Morris does seem to like an equal number men and women on the stage.
“All Fours” was fitful in its attack. There was more energy in the opening movement. At the end, McMurray and Billy Smith, both in paler outfits, entered. At least in this program, Morris introducing new dancers or a new idea on the closing notes of the previous movement happened often enough for it to be a shtick.
McMurray and Smith skittered around the stage to Bartók’s nervous allegro. Two men from the previous movement caught and carried them across the stage, before McMurray and Smith closed the section by covering one another’s mouths with their hands.
Lopes and Christina Sahaida, also in lighter colors, joined in and the violins scratched as the women moved up and down. But here the work lost its dance impulse. The women scuffed along right on a pizzicato; the Mickey Mouse musicality weighed down the choreography.
This group gave way to the dancers in black, working to slashing strings. Even if you didn’t look at the program, you’d have known it was Bartók, and Morris made a structure and phrases that didn’t slavishly come from the music, and would have been interesting even if the musicians put down their bows. It’s not something we saw a lot of this evening.
The paler quartet made a brief entry, and it was back to the octet in black, jogging nervously, bobbing and changing arms. The two groups lived in separate worlds for the piece, but “All Fours” ended with the quartet appearing from behind the octet. The four came forward as the eight implored, praying.
Morris punned his new work, “A minor Dance” to Bach’s Partita No. 3 in A minor. Befitting the Joyce’s stage, it was smaller scale, using only a sextet of dancers, who jogged through the opening in light t-shirts and billowy pants designed by Elizabeth Kurtzman. Here, also, Morris’ preferred suture between sections was to introduce the new idea on the last notes of the old.
The best trick of the evening came during the adagio: Morris had the dancers hold hands, pulling and tipping as they stood and fell, becoming a fanning watermill that all the dancers passed through more than once. It went on for a while, but there was no sin in repeating an interesting idea.
Bach is a structuralist and so is Morris; they weren’t working at cross purposes when Morris started identifying voices in a fugue, but the clear structure also tempted to Morris to fall into choreography-by-numbers.
The dancers made two circles, and the men hauled the women in canon, then the cast slowly progressed across the stage in frieze-like motion. The piece closed with the dancers striding down the diagonal in pairs, and a clap motif that threaded through the work was done by the pianist to close. Unlike the watermill, that felt too clever by half.
The final piece was brought back from 1980. “Castor and Pollux” got its title from Harry Partch’s work, heard on a recording. Like John Cage, Partch’s sextet on prepared instruments echoed Indonesian gamelan music, but didn’t go full-blown into Orientalism. There may have been hints in the dance; the costumes were minimal; the men were bare-chested wearing only shorts that puffed out slightly. There was a spinning motif with crooked arms, and the dancers sprung into the air before exiting. Later on, Morris added a tilt to the phrase. Still, it felt like a movement motif, not cultural commentary.
A solo for Budge moved into a trio; from a male duet Morris built a larger structure. The cast entered in fours, moved into a circle and spun, then went into a large scale dance that changed from facing forward to back. The large scale simple movement felt like a precursor of the Polka from “Grand Duo” he made over a decade later. The cast posed in profile to end the work.
Morris has his adherents and his detractors; you’re either a Morris Man, or you’re not. Yet too often, Morris’ work doesn’t feel musical, but rather shackled to the music. And if you turned the music off, what would be there?
copyright ©2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Tempus Perfectum,” “All Fours,” “A minor Dance,” “Castor and Pollux” – Mark Morris Dance Group
The Joyce Theater, New York, NY
August 11, 2023
Cover: Front row: Christina Sahaida, Dallas McMurray, Billy Smith, Domingo Estrada, Jr., Karlie Budge; Back row: Courtney Lopes, Matthew McLaughlin, Brandon Randolph in “Castor and Pollux.” Photo © Danica Paulos.
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