MAKING A MARK: Harriman-Jewell Series Brings Storied Dance Group to Kauffman Center
If you want to be a member of the Mark Morris Dance Group, you’d better get busy. For not only are the auditions for his 18-member company as rigorous as just about anything in modern dance, some 300 men and women show up to fill one position, but Mark requires much more than just dance chops. “For me a dancer has to be really smart, and well-rounded, and well-read and mature,” says the dancer/choreographer/stage director, who brings his company to the Harriman-Jewell Series on September 28th, “and very gifted as a dancer, and with a musical ear – versatile and not a giant pain in the ass.” He likes dancers who are “adults,” he says, and he encourages them to “go to museums and the opera and the symphony and read books … and find out about politics and religion and culture. … So many dance companies live in a vacuum, and mine doesn’t. And that’s one of the reasons the work is so good.” When asked if there is such a thing as a “Morris dancer,” he says: “I usually get that question if I do a Q & A after a show, and my response is, ‘you were just watching it.”
Born in Seattle in 1956, Mark founded his company in 1980 in New York City, after dancing with such legendary figures as Lar Lubovitch, Hannah Kahn, Laura Dean, and Eliot Feld. In addition to some 130 works for his group, he has created works for many other great companies, and he is deeply involved in music as well: Not only does he choreograph dance for productions at the Metropolitan Opera and elsewhere, but he also serves as stage director and even conductor. His own company is a modern powerhouse, and its Kauffman Center program includes choreography spanning three decades – from the Canonic ¾ Studiesfrom 1982 to one of Mark’s more recent works, Festival Dance from 2011. Mark always tours with live musicians who are part of his company, and the Harriman program includes two works to solo piano (Canonic ¾ Studies and Silhouettes) and two accompanied by piano trio (Rock of Ages from and Festival Dance). He is a busy man. In August, he led a widely acclaimed production of his Dido and Aeneas at New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, and he is currently working on four choreographic works at the same time and on an upcoming production of Handel’s Acis and Galatea.
Is there a key to the “Morris work ethic” that we could all learn from? “The Morris work ethic is, I still have a residual sort of Protestant ‘work guilt,’ ” he says with a laugh, “even though I’m a full-on atheist and have been pretty much my whole life. I have this American thing about ‘idle hands.’ ” But he obviously loves his work. “I listen to music and I sing and I read, so I have a wonderful job. … I work very hard and I have time alone, and there are times that I procrastinate and delay things, but you know, that’s a form of work. … I like to make up dances, and I have a wonderful company, so why not?” Does the stress of running a company fade as soon as he goes into the studio and starts working? “No, it never fades away. That’s why I have a studio, and as you know, the studio has to have air conditioning and cleaning and so on … it’s a giant operation. And I have very, very brilliant staff and great, great dancers and musicians. It’s not stress-free, but then what is, besides death?”
Mark says he is enjoying his 50s. “There’s stuff I can’t do any more, but that’s okay because there are people who can do it way better than I can. I have no regrets about that. I’m sore more than I used to be, and it takes longer to heal if you’re injured.” As far as his creative work goes, he says “nothing is any different except that I’ve had a very good company for a long time.” And, he adds with a laugh, “it’s too late to die young. I could die prematurely, but I can’t die young any more.” Mark is not too complimentary about much of the new dance he sees around him. “I don’t go to dance programs because they’re usually not very good. I go to music shows a lot, I go to the opera all the time. I see some dance.” Many youngsters in the dance field lack perspective, he says. “They’re a-historical and not interested in the past, and like a lot of young people, they think that history began at their birth.”
This the third appearance of Mark’s company on the Harriman Series, and executive and artistic director Clark Morris says it underscores the Series’ long commitment to dance: Its very first presentation in 1965 was a program of dance, when the Series’ late founder Richard Harriman invited legendary Balanchine dancers Patricia McBride and Edward Villella. Since then, the Series has brought nearly every major American company and many from abroad. “We’ve appreciated Mark’s work and his company for a very long time,” Clark says. “He’s certainly among the most important choreographers of his generation.” What he finds unique about Mark is what many have noted: the sheer command of translating music into dance. “I almost consider him like a great maestro,” Clark says, “because he is so grounded in music and musicality, and his dance flows from that.”
The Mark Morris Dance Group performs September 28th at the Kauffman Center. For tickets call 816-415-5025 or go to hjseries.org. The company will lead a master class for dance students at 10 a.m. on September 29th at the Kansas City Ballet’s Bolender Center. It is free and open to the public. At 11 a.m. on September 28th the company will also offer a free movement class for persons with Parkinson’s and their families and caregivers – a special program developed by Mark’s company called Dance for PD, also at the Bolender Center. It is a collaboration of the company, the Series, the Ballet and the National Parkinson Foundation of the Heartland. Register at www.danceforpd.org or call 646-450-3373.
