Marksmanship

More Morris bullseyes

by Marcia B. Siegel

For two-thirds of Mark Morris's Canonic 3/4 Studies, nine dancers traced pseudo-balletic visual patterns over a selection of piano pieces just slightly less banal than the average dance-class muzak. Then suddenly I recognized the Carl Czerny theme that accompanies the finale of Harald Lander's 1948 Études, a flamboyant and tightly structured exposition of classical ballet technique. While I pictured ballerinas flying across the stage, Morris's dancers were plunging into ponderous pliés and stressful two-footed jumps.

With this, Morris's dance became not just a clever spoof of ballet conventions but a rebuttal. One étude can exploit dancers' speed and elevation, another glues them to the ground. It's surprising how often Morris succeeds in making an aesthetically valid counterproposal as well as a parody. Last week's concert, during the Mark Morris Dance Group's annual visit to the Dance Umbrella series at the Emerson Majestic Theatre, provided more than one moment when the choreographer's phenomenal craftsmanship climbed over into more fulfilling ground.

With Morris, a lot depends on the musical selection itself. Medium, a new work set to John Harbison's tribute to Franz Schubert, "November 19, 1828," starts out in Morris's most didactic mode. Three people on the floor reach skyward. Three standing people move through linking and separating poses. All the moves equal notes in the score, and at first hearing, the score seemed dry and repetitive to me.

But in the third section, the dancers form three duets. Working with the initial movement lexicon, two women converse, one following the other, one interrupting the other, both of them moving in quick accord. A man and a woman wrap around each other romantically. Two men square off in a combat or challenge. As the music edges into a minor key, and then into dissonance, the movement themes gradually overlap. The dancers begin to share one another's vocabularies, and their partnerships begin to shift along with their gender roles. With movement and relationships newly sorted out, they proceed into a formal, fugue section. The music ends with a question, an unfinished phrase, and the final curtain arrests the dancers too, on the way to new destinations.

Whatever happens in a Mark Morris dance happens in the music, and his musical taste is sophisticated. With live accompaniment -- here pianist Ethan Iverson anchored various ensembles -- a Morris performance is always a musical treat. In addition to the Harbison and the selections for Canonic 3/4 Studies, there were Shakespeare sonnets set by the composer John Wilson and sung by soprano Eileen Clark Reisner (A Spell), and Lou Harrison's Grand Duo for Violin and Piano.

The Harrison piece is written in a sort of crypto-atonal style, alternating between moods of somber mysticism and crazed exuberance. The 14 dancers, dressed in tie-dyed pajamas and loincloths, line up across the stage and gesture together as if obeying some ritual formula. Their bodies are flat, limbs angular, as if they'd emerged from the inscriptions on some barbaric tomb. When the musical rhythms become unpredictable, the dancers break their formation and follow it faithfully. Later they gather in two opposing camps. The pianist bangs his fist on the keys; the dancers glare at each other and punch the air. This could be one of those cathartic fights where tribes act out their anger but don't actually kill.

There's something unrelenting about the dance, something impersonal. Without suggesting any particular ethnic group or practice, Morris shows us a primitivism fending off the unknown. The music climaxes with a demented polka, and the dancers feverishly clump from foot to foot, whack their thighs, shoot their finicky gestures into the air, and skitter in a circle until they seem ready to drop. There's something comical in Harrison's perpetual motion, and the dancers look a bit like elves, toiling away at their anvils and spinning wheels in a fairytale ballet.

We love the earnest, dopy types Morris invents. In A Spell, mismatched lovers (Ruth Davidson and Guillermo Resto) are supervised by an outsized Cupid (Morris himself), who swans in and out with florid gestures and winks. He may look campy, but I've seldom seen dancing so musical. At times like these I think of Mark Morris as the incarnation of Isadora Duncan.