Mark Morris at BAM

[flipsy]

The Mark Morris Dance Group opened a brief home stand this week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, with a New York premiere of "All Fours," and a world premiere of "Violet Cavern." The new works showed the choreographer and the company at the top of their game.

"All Fours" is a title you might wonder about until you see that it's just about numbers: a lead foursome plus an ensemble of four men and four women, dancing to String Quartet number 4 (!) by Bela Bartok. Done in street clothes on a bare stage, with only changes in lighting to mark the changes in mood, this has the look and feel of a Greek drama. The story is played out by the four protagonists, in white, two men and two women who carry on what seems to be an impassioned argument in movement, involving all four in shifting combinations. This action is bracketed by the eight-member chorus, which begins and ends the piece with strongly accented unison moves, repeating an upward gesture of prayer and despair. My only regret was that it didn't go on longer. I would have liked to see more of the four lead dancers, especially the women, Marjorie Folkman and Julie Worden, who moved with a fierce purpose that made me think of the likes of Antigone and Medea. I was looking for some change or resolution in their squabble, but that's not what Morris is about, I think. His choreography is not so much pointed toward dramatic conclusions, but life itself, which goes on and on with one complication just leading to another.

That's the essence of the longer piece on the program, Violet Cavern, to live jazz by The Bad Plus. The action consists of dancers crossing the stage in different combinations and endless variations, under what looks like a bunch of clotheslines hung with paint-spattered banners. One recurrent image is a threesome, with one dancer walking across the stage, holding the upstretched hands of two others who are sliding across on their backs. I called this "walking the dogs," and it's part of what I think of as Morris's urban choreography: it's a street scene, with multiple stories that we see only in passing, but an energy that encompasses all. It ends with nearly all the dancers settling down to the floor in the dark, but two, at opposite diagonal ends of the stage, continuing to whirl in the light with their arms upraised, even as the music ends and the curtain falls past them. Just right for the "city that doesn't sleep."

Edited June 11, 2004 by flipsy

[Alexandra]

Thank you for this, flipsy. I'd been curious about "All Fours" (the first thing that pops into my head is people crawling around!) I like your "urban choreography" referrence too; I think it's right on. It's a beautiful review, thank you!

Odd that Morris is doing the same program all week and not a repertory season.