Mark Morris Dance Group & Music Ensemble
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PILLOWNOTES JACOB’S PILLOW EXTENDS SPECIAL THANKS by Seth Stewart Williams TO OUR VISIONARY LEADERS The PillowNotes series comprises essays commissioned from our Scholars-in-Residence to provide audiences with a broader context for viewing dance. VISIONARY LEADERS form an important foundation of support and demonstrate their passion for and commitment to Jacob’s Pillow through Mark Morris’ career to date has been bracketed by two phases in which he has brashly upended choreographic conventions. One was hard to miss, and the other easy to overlook. The first phase, when he burst onto the scene in the annual gifts of $10,000 and above. early 1980s, challenged a number of the dance world’s pieties: Morris foregrounded his queerness during an era when many choreographers favored a glass closet, questioned when and whether gender matters, and made dances marked by Their deep affliliation ensures the success and longevity of the a devotion to music that was at once brainy and deeply felt. Pillow’s annual offerings, including educational initiatives, free public programs, The School, the Archives, and more. This musicality might have seemed something of a throwback if not for the fact that few choreographers—perhaps not even George Balanchine—have been so precisely and wittily attentive to the structural nuances of a musical score, and if not for the fact that Morris directed his musicality at any genre whatsoever, from un-championed gems of the PRESENTS $25,000+ baroque repertory, to the Carnatic traditions of India, to deep cuts from mavericks like Yoko Ono and Harry Partch. MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP Carole* & Dan Burack Christopher Jones* & Deb McAlister Morris’ choreography does not, like that of many other choreographers praised for their musicality, merely reflect the The Barrington Foundation Wendy McCain rhythm and mood of its music. Instead, Morris uses dance to expose the hidden workings of a score—when a composer & MUSIC ENSEMBLE Frank & Monique Cordasco Fred Moses* transforms a musical motif, for example, Morris subjects choreographic motifs to a related transformation. His hallmark Hon. Stephan P. Driscoll*, in honor and memory Jennie A. Kassanoff & Dan H. Schulman as a choreographer is an uncanny ability to give musical ideas choreographic forms that are at once so logically right and yet so wholly surprising. And yet his eye for music rarely leads to a purely abstract product. His dances, sometimes of John Lindquist & Barton Mumaw Mark & Taryn Leavitt Ted Shawn Theatre subtle morality tales in movement, have offered audiences a wry take on everything from the erotics of vampirism (One Stephanie & Robert ‡ Gittleman Sylvia T. Pope* Charming Night, 1985) and of striptease (Mythologies, 1986), to the dangers of American jingoism (World Power, 1995, July 17-21, 2019 Carolyn Gray & George Peppard Robert & Eileen Rominger and Empire Garden, 2009), to the high stakes that underlie even the most humdrum of workplaces (The Office, 1994). Joan & Jim Hunter If Morris’ taste in music was from the outset almost shockingly catholic, he was equally open-minded in his choice of dancers, whose diversity of bodies made them look less like a dance company and more like America. His embrace of such ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Mark Morris a heterogeneous ensemble had something to do with his own initial training as a boy in Seattle, which in addition to ballet $10,000+ involved serious study of Spanish and Balkan folk dances. In synthesizing such traditions he has repeatedly valorized the Dr. Norman Abramson Ann* & Peter Herbst collective, not only as a choreographic unit but, implicitly, as a social unit. Even one of the century’s great ballet soloists, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Nancy Umanoff Deborah & Charles Adelman Laura* & Nick Ingoglia Mikhail Baryshnikov, found that new forms of artistry were possible as one member among many in his performances with Aliad Fund Nancy K. Kalodner the Mark Morris Dance Group, and with the company he co-founded with Morris in 1990, the White Oak Dance Project. Rick & Nurit Amdur Amy & Richard Kohan Across Morris’ dances—from the early hit Gloria (1981), to the mid-career masterpiece Grand Duo (1993), to more recent MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP Mica Bernas Candace* & Rick Beinecke Lizbeth & George Krupp achievements like Socrates (2010) and The (2015)—he has demonstrated an almost peerless facility in choreographing Karlie Budge** Linda & Bob Berzok Jack & Elizabeth Meyer, in honor of contrapuntal groups. Brandon Cournay Sydelle & Lee Blatt Diane & Deval Patrick David Carlisle & Morene Bodner Hans* & Kate Morris While Morris’ arrival and early successes threw many audiences and critics back on their heels, the radicalism of his Domingo Estrada, Jr. Chervenak-Nunnallé Foundation Gov. Deval L. & Diane Patrick more recent phase has been all too easily misapprehended. This is in part because it’s really an intensification—although Lesley Garrison* Neil* & Kathleen Chrisman Claudia Perles a significant one—of the musical and group sensibilities that have distinguished him from the outset. The difference is Lauren Grant that he has not only heightened the interdependence of dance and music in his choreography, but has extended this to Ranny Cooper & David Smith Caren & Barry Roseman Sarah Haarmann Jeffrey Davis & Michael T. Miller Hunter K. Runnette* & Mark P. VandenBosch an institutional interdependence between the making of music and the making of dance. Morris’ use of live music has David DeFilippo & Lisa Shapiro, in memory of Naomi Seligman & Ernie von Simson evolved from a preference to an imperative. His company has expanded to include not only superlative dancers, but an Deepa Liegel** Robert Gittleman Mark Sena & Linda Saul-Sena in-house collection of superlative musicians, all of whom now tour as the Mark Morris Dance Group and Music Ensemble. Aaron Loux Morris has occasionally taken the helm of this ensemble himself as one of its conductors, making him perhaps the only Hermine Drezner Natalie & Howard Shawn Laurel Lynch* Sheila Drill Lisbeth Tarlow & Stephen Kay major choreographer whose career has spanned both stage and orchestral pit. A live-music ethos also guides the broader Nancy & Michael Feller Roger Tilles mission of the entire Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn: its classes feature accompaniment by everything from pianos Dallas McMurray David & Nina Fialkow in honor of Stephen Weiner & Donald Cornuet to djembe drums, and its pioneering Dance for PD® (Parkinson's Disease) initiative stresses the cognitive, physical, and Minga Prather** social benefits of doing accessible movement in response to live music. Deval & Diane Patrick and Mark A. Leavitt Ellen Weissman Brandon Randolph Mark & Liz Williams Jeanne Donovan Fisher Morris’ work to integrate music and dance is on the one hand a reversion to Western traditions (especially of the Nicole Sabella Joan* & Charlie Gross Elaine* & Irving Wolbrom seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when choreographers were almost always also musicians). On the other hand, it follows from Morris’ embrace of several global traditions that thrive on the unification of music and dance, the live Christina Sahaida * Former Trustees, staff, faculty, interns, interaction of which allows performers and spectators alike to engage in a nuanced exchange of aesthetic sensations. In Billy Smith The School’s dancers, or artists-in-residence particular, Morris has for decades made close study of how gesture and sound interact in classical Indian dance; while Noah Vinson ‡ Deceased he rarely draws on odissi or bharata natyam directly, these and other forms have served as crucial models for his own innovations. MMDG MUSIC ENSEMBLE Colin Fowler INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT Few choreographers have thrived in as wide a range of venues as Morris, who has devised work for both grand Georgy Valtchev As of May 23, 2019 major support for Jacob’s Pillow has been generously provided by the proscenium stages and intimate black box theaters. Upon his appointment in 1988 to head the dance division of the L’Allegro, il following institutions: The Arison Arts Foundation; Arnhold Foundation; The Barr Foundation; Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Morris developed large-scale productions of enduring importance: Penseroso ed il Moderato Dido and Aeneas The Hard Nut The Barrington Foundation; Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation; Blue Cross Blue Shield (1988), (1989), and (1991). He has choreographed seminal opera Nixon in China of Massachusetts; The Chervenak-Nunnallé Foundation; The Feigenbaum Foundation; Gladys productions—from the premiere of (Houston Grand Opera, 1987) to landmark revivals of baroque operas Platée *Alumni of The School at Jacob's Pillow Krieble Delmas Foundation; The Ford Foundation; Howard Gilman Foundation; Harkness like (Royal Opera, 1997)—and enjoyed commissions from the world’s foremost ballet companies. Morris is equally Foundation for Dance; William Randolph Hearst Foundation; The John S. and James L. celebrated for the sweep of his more intimate chamber compositions, for which the Pillow has always been a special ** MMDG Apprentice Knight Foundation; Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency; MassDevelopment; The home. Not only has the MMDG appeared in over twenty seasons at the Pillow, but residencies here have contributed to Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Mertz Gilmore Foundation; New England Foundation for the the development of several dances, including celebrated works like The Hard Nut, Grand Duo, and Falling Down Stairs, Arts; National Endowment for the Arts; Onota Foundation; The Prospect Hill Foundation; a 1995 collaboration with the cellist Yo-Yo Ma that was filmed in the Doris Duke Theatre for broadcast on the PBS series The Shubert Foundation; The Robert and Tina Sohn Foundation; The Spingold Foundation; “Inspired by Bach.” Talented Students in the Arts Initiative, a collaboration of the Doris Duke Charitable © 2019 Seth Stewart Williams and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Foundation and Surdna Foundation; The Thompson Family Foundation; The Velmans Seth Stewart Williams, assistant professor at Barnard College of Columbia University, is a scholar of dance history and Foundation; Weissman Family Foundation; and Jacob’s Pillow Business Partners. Renaissance literature.