Spring2011 Ballet Review From the Spring 2011 issue of Ballet Review A Conversation with Mark Morris On the cover: Mark Morris’ Festival Dance. 4 Paris – Peter Sparling 6 Boston – Jeffrey Gantz 8 Stupgart – Gary Smith 10 San Francisco – Leigh Witchel 13 Paris – Peter Sparling 15 Sarasota, FL – Joseph Houseal 17 Paris – Peter Sparling 19 Toronto – Gary Smith 20 Paris – Leigh Witchel 40 Joel Lobenthal 24 A Conversation with Cynthia Gregory Joseph Houseal 40 Lady Aoi in New York Elizabeth Souritz 48 Balanchine in Russia 61 Daniel Gesmer Ballet Review 39.1 56 A Conversation with Spring 2011 Bruce Sansom Editor and Designer: Marvin Hoshino Sandra Genter 61 Next Wave 2010 Managing Editor: Roberta Hellman Michael Porter Senior Editor: Don Daniels 68 Swan Lake II Associate Editor: Joel Lobenthal Darrell Wilkins 48 70 Cherkaoui and Waltz Associate Editor: Larry Kaplan Joseph Houseal Copy Editor: 76 A Conversation with Barbara Palfy Mark Morris Photographers: Tom Brazil Costas 87 London Reporter – Clement Crisp 94 Music on Disc – George Dorris Associates: Peter Anastos 100 Check It Out Robert Greskovic George Jackson Elizabeth Kendall 70 Paul Parish Nancy Reynolds James Supon David Vaughan Edward Willinger Sarah C. Woodcock CoverphotobyTomBrazil: MarkMorris’FestivalDance. Mark Morris’ Festival Dance. (Photos: Tom Brazil) 76 ballet review A Conversation with – Plato and Satie – was a very white piece. Morris: I’m postracial. Mark Morris BR: I like white. I’m not against white. Morris:Famouslyornotfamously,Satiesaid that he wanted that piece of music to be as Joseph Houseal “white as classical antiquity,”not knowing, of course, that the Parthenon was painted or- BR: My first question is . ange and turquoise and then all the glass, all Morris: You haven’t asked a question. the statues. The marble wasn’t the valuable BR: Okay, I don’t need to. As I understand, part. The realism was the wonderful part. you started out in folk dance, European folk BR: There’s a nineteenth-century painter dance. I think “folk” is a dumb word. I don’t that I couldn’t think of last night . like labeling things folk – or ancient dance, Morris: Jacques-Louis David. There are a traditional dance, indigenous dance, ethnic couple of visual quotes from his very famous dance. By the time you call it “folk,” the folk painting “The Death of Socrates.” But more aren’t doing it anymore. specifically, the palette of costumes is as di- Morris: I also don’t like the terms “live mu- rectly as it can be from that one painting. The sic” or “modern dance” . “world dance” or pigment doesn’t translate to light and fabric “world music.” I understand the usefulness of at all, but the three groups of colors are as spe- those terms. For some legal reason, we have to cific a quotation as you can get. call the gym in my building a wellness center. BR: In the first piece, The Muir, the color Wellness? I don’t even know what that is. It is palette alone was so beautiful. the word for health that has had a different Morris: That’s a Sir Walter Scott dance in life when it started. I call it a gym. I think the first place. that’s nice even when nobody’s naked. But re- BR: Does folk dancing inspire you? ally, “wellness”? Give me a break. Morris: No, it does not. It’s what I do. Anyway, flamenco was the first dance that I just made a title for the new dance: Festi- I did, but then shortly after that, I was study- val Dance, for six male/female couples. They ing Spanish folk dance: jota and Escuela Bol- stay in those couples through the whole thing. era. By the time I moved to Spain at seventeen, Maybe some queers will be upset, but it’s com- I had abandoned flamenco mostly and was pletely, as young people in college now say, studying the jota from Aragon. That was my “heteronormative.”Somebodyaskedmeabout thing. If that’s not folk dancing, I don’t know it, and I said, “No, why? Because what I do is what is. usually homonormative? I don’t know what It was also part of the times. There were a you’re talking about.” In Festival Dance there lot of people doing folk dancing. And I was a are couple dances and wine dances. It is very specialist in Croatian dancing. I taught Croa- hand-holding and it’s very folk dancing look- tian dance a lot, Bulgarian dancing, different ing, but I very rarely make direct quotations kinds of Romanian dancing. of somebody’s national dance because . BR: What is your background? BR:WhataboutthebrilliantMayPoledance Morris: What do you mean? in your production of Purcell’s King Arthur? BR: Your ethnic background. Morris: Well, it’s two things specifically. Morris: I don’t have one. Anglo, whatever. MayPoledancesareoftenMorrisdances.Mor- Welsh, more than anything. Both sides of my ris dancing includes May Pole dancing. I like family had a lot of Welsh in them. It started the idea that it’s a Morris dance. The other with a regular brew, with the Anglo mix. I’m thing is that it’s in the exact palindrome of white and from Seattle, etc. I’m postracial. that piece. Exactly. It’s not fake when they BR: I thought Socrates at last night’s concert undo the ribbons. It is exactly in the middle ©2011MarkMorris,JosephHouseal 77 King Arthur (2006). (Photo: Tom Brazil) because it’s a passacaglia, if the rhythm works voice and piano. You told me it’s hardly been out. done. This Chicago performance is only the The dancers wanted to kill me because if third one. There’s a lot to understand about one person fucks up, everybody’s . So we it. practiced without the ribbons. We did it a Morris: That’s what I love. It’s a concert for whole bunch of different ways. Then, in re- adults. Nobody does that. I like children too; hearsal, I said, “Take the ribbons,” and every- they would likeSocrates. It takes watching and body panicked. There was really no safety net listening. It takes some responsibility. to do that dance, which I love. BR: What about the supertitles? If you look If you do any combination, step-hop and up, you can’t watch the dancing. hop-step, you are treading on someone’s Morris: It depends on where you’re sitting, ethnic toes. It’s, “Oh, sorry.” I have a big, big and you can ignore them. I‘ve never done it knowledge of the catalogue of these dances before. Of course, why would anyone do that? and the styles of them. Even if it’s a hasapiko, Why would you have supertitles for a dance? or a horo, I know it well enough so I don’t have It’s ridiculous. to work it out. BR: The words are important: the Platonic There’s a dance in King Arthur that takes Dialogues. place in front of the curtain that’s in two Morris: Even if they know Satie, they don’t quadrilles. It’s a bourrée, an old French bour- know this piece of music, and not one line in rée. It looks like a contra dance, but it’s not. it repeats. There are no repeats, nothing re- And there’s a pretty direct quote from old peats. Some words repeat, you know, “the.” Provençal dance. You hold hands. You’re hold- The text is very important, or why would ing a basket or belts or hands or arms. That’s you set it to music? Since it doesn’t repeat, it already something. doesn’t have a romantic payoff. It’s a line of BR: Your Socrates to music by Erik Satie for text that goes off into the future. 78 ballet review Occasionally, a phrase will repeat, but the BR: Who? music never repeats exactly.There are melod- Morris: Johann Nepomuk Hummel. If Bee- ic themes that repeat, a bar will repeat. Peo- thoven hadn’tlived, he would be the only com- ple hear this music as repetitive and it’s very poser you’ve heard of from that period. As a much not. It’s hard to sing because it sweeps child he was a student of Mozart’s, and he was high and low. Even though it’s “climaxless,” a very great piano virtuoso, defined piano it’s a big, big tessitura. It sounds so simple, but technique for everybody, and was a famous the singer comes in at any time on any pitch. composer in the early nineteenth century. It’s not 5, 6, 7, 8 tonic. The piano system and Beethoven loved him. He was hugely popular the vocal system are stacked, but they’re not and wrote a lot of music. There’s only one fa- closely related. mous piece, his Trumpet Concerto, which Thereisasimpledeviceinthesecondmove- every trumpeter knows. The music prefigures ment, “The River Dance.” It only goes from left Shubert harmonically. It’s really wonderful to right, and one reads from left to right, so it and kind of corny, very Czech. It’s very sort of goes like that if you choose. I watch it now to Bohemian.YouknowIlovethat.There’savery “proofread” it. I like that you can do that if hard piano part and not so hard violin and you want to. cello parts. In March we’re doing some concerts in my BR: Are you a musician? building, [in the James and Martha Duffy Per- Morris: Yes. formance Space] that seats 140 people. You’re BR: Do you play an instrument? lucky to get in.