NEW YORK'S PICTURE NEWSPAPER@
18
DAllY NEWS
s
Saturday, June 23, 1990 Saturday,
June 23, 1990
'Dido': Humor, subtlety and genius from Mark Morris By CHARLES lURRIST
and Aeneas" is an operatic cu,
guage for the deaf. The poses of the chorus and much of their port de bras
Greek vases. It is Morris' great inspiaptly the flattened profiles on ration echo to have the dancers' signing written for performance by "young and miming hands reproduce the imgentlewomen" at a 17th-century Lon- ages of the insipid libretto while the don boarding school, it has a libretto movements of their bodies respond to by Nahum Tate that is almost unbear- the sober splendor of Purcell's music. ably silly. Now, Mark Morris has The result is an hour of dancing that turned it into a ballet for his is, at almost every moment, B r u sse Is -bas e d M0 n n a i e ;:~_=-c==':?=Y.::=' both comical and gravely beauDance Group. The work had its REVI EW tiful. I would not have thought New York premiere at the this possible, but Morris has Brooklyn Academy of Music on made it triumphantly so. Wednesday. The choral dances are the richest, Morris has placed the singers in the brilliantly interpreting the music in pit with the orchestra, and the stage is every case. They have a simple, sculpoccupied by the dancers throughout. tural quality that comes of their being Classical theater is his reference built up from starkly limited elepoint, and the setting could not be ments. Yet there is never a hint ofthe simpler: a pair of low balustrades and addled repetitiveness of those who painted canvas hung loosely as a profess minimalism as a creed. The backdrop. All the dancers wear performances of chorus and princisleeveless black tops and black sa- pals are uniformly exemplary. rongs, save Guillermo Resto's Aeneas, I left BAl'vI'sMajestic Theater withwho is bare-<'hested. out any doubt that "Dido and Aeneas" Morris himself dances both the role is a work of genius, meanwhile busily of Dido and the evil Sorceress who compiling a list of those who might brings about her ruin, and gender is see it and weep for self-reproach. irrelevant elsewhere as well. The Chief among them would be windy chorus of six men and women work as European Tanztheater gurus who feel a unit to represent witches, sailors they cannot unbvrden themselves of and the members of Dido's court. any artistic idea in under five hours. The movement and gesture Morris And geriatric pranksters like T\\'Yla employs are drawn variously from Tharp, who regard humor and subtlemodern and Indian dance, from Euro- ty as incompatible. (Jurrist covers dance COMIC·VET·GRAVE BEAUTY: GuillennoResto(I.),MarkMonisin "Didoand Aeneas" pean folk dance and from sign lan.,' for Extra.)
HENRY PURCELL'S "DIDO rioslty. Less than an hour long,
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7,1989
DANCE REVIEW'
Mark Morris'
dazzling 'Dido' By Christine Temin Globe Staff Of all the odd things about Mark Morris' sublime "Dido and Aeneas,". an opera with the singers offstage and . the two leading women played by Morris himself, oddest of all is 'how inevi-: table and unforced it seems. You even wonder why no one thought of rlQing Purcell's 1689 work this way before,' though no one but the outrageous Morris could or would have, of course. In black sarong, frizzed ponytail:Juid pale makeup, he makes a majestic: Queen of Carthage; his thick torso, and doughy biceps detract not a.~hit from his heroic femininity. Ha1ft.set loose to play the Sorceress, he Sliim~ merswith evil: His shoulders:~gest and arms vibrate ~ violently="o~ think his gold fake fingernails;:~are about to send forth lightning bolt~.. ~ "Dido" is dark, relieved periodlpil.. MqRRIS, P~ge 32
Dancer Mark Morris rehearses his new production of "Dido and Aeneas," which had its American premiere last night at the Emerson Majestic Theater.
Mar~ Morri~'d.azzling'Didoand Aeneas' ,
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• MORRIS '" "DIDO AND AENEAS','- Music by Continued from Page 29, Purcell; choreography by Mark ly by humor macabre' or jolly: Morris; performed by; the Monwitches whose Idea of a good time naie Dance Group/Mark Morris is pretending, to rip each other's and Emmanuel Music, conducted guts open: sailors whose pumping by Craig Smith, with soloists elbows during a jig make them Jayne West, Lorraine Hunt. look like soused, chickens. FlftyLynn Torgrove, James Maddafive minutes long and with a cast lena and Frank Kelley. Sponof just 12, "Dido" is modest. In sored by the Lila Wallace-Reaq.scale. But it Is grandiose in spirit er's Dtgest Fund. Presented by Dance Umbrella at the Emerson right from, the opening, when the silhouetted c;horus leans forward, Majestic Theater ,last night. like figureheads, awaiting the .aro Program repeats through Saturrival of the shipwrecked Aeneas; 'day ..... Then they advance with great lunges and tiny parallel steps on· Morris often crafts a note-bytiptoe: destiny on the march. note correspondence between mu- , Doom hangs over the piece, Dido,· sic and dance: hands shiver at a especially, dances with ch1ll for-, ,tremolo In the music, and aslngle mallty and restraint, using highly.' gesture, Is segmented to match a stylized gestures: Awkwardly Ilft- staccato pulse. Dancers match the ' Globe phO:~IB~ooksKraft ed elbows that make, her., arms buoyant chorus, ':Ever Gentle,". into right angles are sy,mbols of a E ver Sill Mornsas" rehearses Dido and m n"g ". b y, big ounc n on, Ae soul In distress. ;'" their heels and shaking their. legs ne. The plot - mythology conslder- " with, childlike wholeheartedness. Faune." The seated Dido whose ably reworked by Purcell's IIbret-, , Robert Bordo's set Is Inspired: hands plunge. down toward her tlst. Nahum Tate - isslencler. a draped backcloth and a floor- ' spread legs Is reminiscent of MarAeneas falls In love with Dido; the cloth" both painted Aegean blue' tha Graham's solo "Lamentawidowed queen, but the Sorceress' and dotted with brown land' tion."Thegrotesquely splayed fintricks him Into abandoning her, masses. The set stands for the gers and deep, sq~ats"suggest whereupon she dies. Morris' brllworld, and. serves, as reminder Asian dance. Yet Dido IsunlHant staging Is simple, full of se~ that "Dido" Is about geography: fied, anything but a pastiche, , maphorlc gestures - a fe:-v from Aeneas:s journey from Troy to Credit for this unity goes not American Sign Language '~ with' Carthage and on to. "found" only toMorrls but to his dancers, nary a canonical dance step. The Rome.' who perform with breathtaking choreographer has created a gesThe two-dlmenslonaIlty of dedication - especially those who ,tured language, in which Dido Is much of the choreography, with have been with Morris for. several Indicated by a hand circling the' dancers twisting so you see them' years or 'more. Gu1llermo Resto face and the 'command "Away!" - frontally from the waist up and In gets the thankless role of Aeneas, whether uttered by Dido or the' profile. from. the waist down, re-. who Is lustful but ultimately a Sorceress - is a backward swoop calls Egyptian statues, Greek cad. Penny Hutchinson, as Dido's of an arm moving with hurricane vases, and, most insistently. Nisister Belinda, and Susan Hadley, force. linsky's "L'Ap'res-mldl d'un In the solo Second Woman part,
," _
'
are splendid, and splendidly served by choreography that casts them as dizzy matchmakers and then as chief mourners'. Terl Weksler Is both raucous and dainty as a drunken sailor. The chorus glues the work together, whether quietly' witnessing, or weaving among the leading characters, or forming a stagespanning horizontal by sitting, twisted at the waist. on an upstage balustrade. There Is no differentiation drawn between male· and female chorus members: Both sexes serve as, witches, sailors,' and courtiers. Christine Van Looo's costumesidentical black sarongs for everyone except Aeneas, who is bare-chested - relT'.force the visual unity and show off the stark chQreography. Morris dominates the production, and his great original contribution to Itls the dual role - similar, to that· of the ballerina In "Swan Lake," who plays both the , Swan Queen and her evil opposite.' The force of his presence aston~ Ishes: His Dido achieves rea1.grandeur In death, arms stretching wide enough to embrace 'the world ... :'., ." fL"-·' , "Dido" was one of the works the Belgian press loathed, during Morris' first season In residence In Brussels. where: he has a threeyear contract at the Theatre Royale de la Monnale. "Mark Morris go home!" one headline sCI'eamed. But In .its American premiere last night. "Dldo'~ 'turned out to be glorious. Mark' Morris, welcome home.
Debut following
in Mark Morris' footsteps.
Mark Morris' Dido and Aeneas looms as
A dignified Dido: Amber Darragh with Craig Biesecker in a favorite Morris mle.
one of his towering works, perhaps the apotheosis of his profound partnering with Baroque vocal music. In his 1989 staging of Henry Purcell's 1689 opera, Morris created not only an enduring masterpiece, but also dual roles that provided a showcase for his own gifts as a dancer. When the dance was revived in 2000, he still offered his indelible version of those roles-Dido, the tragic queen of Carthage, and the Sorceress who plots her doom. But his decision to include Dido in the repertoire for his company's 2Sthanniversary season raised the question of how-perhaps whether-those roles could be handed over to other performers. When the curtain rose on Dido at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on March IS, the proud, lamenting queen was newly embodied by Amber Darragh, whose lean, angular physique is completely different from Morris' plush, fleshier one. She brought dignity and gravitas to the role, capturing its emotional turmoil rendered through stylized movement that alludes to early modern dance and ancient forms. (The choreographer had split his roles between two dancers; Bradon McDonald performed the Sorceress.) Having joined the Mark Morris Dance Group in 2001, Darragh had never performed the work. "Everything about it was new to me," she noted in an interview the
it's great to harve people who can do those parts so fabulously," he says. The grand scale, lush physicality,
and
fierce fervor of Morris' interpretation had created a vivid, iconic impression. But Morris made it clear that he wanted Darragh to fin.d her own way. "I chose to focus entirely on the language of the choreography and the character of Dido herself," says Darragh. "I did a lot of rese3rch on her; I rea-d essays and stories. So I approached it from getting to know her, and getting to know the music. Then, instinctually, I just knew who she was." She learned the basic outline of the choreography from video, but all her coaching was with Morris himself. "He left it very open," she says about the rehearsals with her and McDonald. "And I think that was exciting for him - and for us." The fact that the gender-bending aspect of the role was eliminated was not a topic of discussion. "It's obviously diHerent: I don't have to approach it from wanting people to believe I'm a woman. "The archaic aspect of the movement was harder than it looks. The challenge was to be very simple, and then convey these very strong emotions," says Darragh. "Every gesture and movement represents words. That's how we're speaking to each other. I remember Mark saying some-
week after the three performances (see "Reviews," June). An Oregon native and Juilliard graduate, she had performed with
thing like, 'Thi1i isn't method acting.' It's so powerful and simple. You don't have to
the Limon Dance Company for two years. Within the MMDG, people speculated about how Morris would cast Dido if it
"The first night," Darragh recalls, "everyone's nerves were very high. But the
did return. "When he cast it this way, it was obviously a new take, splitting up the roles," Darragh says. "I found out last fall that I would be doing Dido. It was pretty overwhelming, but I felt from Mark immediately that he trusted me with it. It was an honor to feel that-and a gift." For Morris, passing on the role to his dancers was emotional, but not threatening. "I wanted to do the piece again, and
put a lot on top of it."
music is unbelievable and as soon as I got onstage it pulled me in." Morris had Oarragh and McDonald learn both of hi'S roles in the work, so at some point either or both might perform the dual charaders. "They can both do the whole piece, and that's probably how it will happen when we do it again," says Manis. "For New York I was a little concerned, since it's a big dealand they did fabulously." -Susan Reiter
I
I
FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 1990 • MANHATI'AN
DA
NeE
&
THE
• 25 CENTS
ATE
R
Mark Morris' 'Dido arid Aeneas" Choreography with humor and irreverence
The mating of music and image and a question of the future
whips up a storm to distract Dido theater that, in its present state of careand Aeneas (the sexy Guillermo fully fostered dilapidation, calls to mind By Tim Page nothing so much as Greek ruins. Resto, who happens to be a compelSurely, if anything in our culture detoo much of what Mark Morris ling dancer). The witches, led by Aeneas" dates back at least to serves' to be nurtured and protected, it has done with "Dido' and Aen- Ruth Davidson and Jon Mensinger, Virgil's "Aenei~," one of the is the arts·- which survive wars, polia roistering band, so propelled by most durable manifestations tiCS,pestilence and the erosion of civileas," one of the oldest operas ex- are mischief-making that they move as if WOULDBE impossible to make TRAGEDY of "DidoSome and izations to blaze anew for each generaof the Roman Empire. tant. He has opened it up, mak- in overdrive. 1,700years later, it was fashioned into tion. It was against this polycultural ing its beauty accessible through From all participants - probably aggregate of music, dance, words and largely due to the richness of the mutiful pocket opera theater, two millenia in the making, I I ography persic - comes a sense of the expansion • in England by . that an impassioned plea for the recer• formed by his and extension of time and place, beMonnaie Dance yond Purcell and tification of the National Endowment aHenry simple and beau•• dynamic chorethe ballet's 57-minute duration .•• Nahum Tate. Al- for the Arts was delivered from the MaGroup, one of the and far into the reaches of antiquity world's best modern dance companies. - and for evoking antiquity, nothing most exactly three centuries after that, jestic Theater stage. The following pre"Dido and Aeneas" has hardly been could be better than the Majestic "Dido" was transformed again, into a sentation of "Dido" by BAM Opera, done in a reverential mode. The mere Theater's updated crumble and arena narrative dance by Mark Morris, which 'which would have been./o'irtuallyimpossi:"le without the NEA, only drove fact of Morris' casting himself in both seating. III . I saw Wednesday night at a Brooklyn home the point. of the best parts, both females Nicholas McGegan led members of Dido the Queen of Carthage, as well MONNAIE DANCE GROUP IIIARK MORRIS. "Dido and Aeneas," choreographed by Marl< Monis. the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra as the Sorceress who is Aeneas' undo- Composed by Henry Purcell, libretto by Nahum Tate. Muslc by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and Concert Chorale of New York in ing - guarantees more than a touch Nicholas McGegan, music director, and the Concert Chorale of New Yorl<. Wednesday night at the the Majestic's pit, while Mark Morris Brooklyn Academy of Music Majestic Theater. Through Saturday. of humor, which also bids us draw and the Monnaie Dance Group interpreted the drama above. It was a pernear. Audiences would do well to read· formant") that followedmost of the curthe myth before seeing "Dido and rent dictates of musicological Aeneas," the better to appreciate its scholarship - tiny orchestra, smallish magic. chorus and a general avoidance of roMorris as these two females is not mantic affect - yet McGegan and his a drag show; it's a tour de force. Diforces were not afraid of direct expresdo's low-slung passivity in the face of sion, something that often gets lost her fate - Aeneas will leave for Itaamid the correctness. ly; she will die - has as its opposite Judith Malafronte brought majesty the self-actualizing force of the conand languor to the role of Dido, while Dana Hanchard invested sweetness and niving Sorceress. So Dido - sympaa bright, reedy charm into the disparate thetically attended by her sister Becharacters of Belinda and the Witch. linda, the marvelous Penny Richard Stilwell made an authoritative Hutchinson - drapes herself languorAen.eas,delivering his lines with an ora· ously over the balustrades at court. tor's diction arid direction. This music The ensemble dances crafted for her critic will not presume to comment on courtiers, who move with arms carethe dance except to say that he often fully shaped and placed, have a found himself stirred and challenged by slightly somnolent grandeur that sugthe mating of music and image. Morris, gests a sculpture garden come to life. in particular, brought a volatile intensiThe Sorceress, on the other hand, ·ty to the role of Dido, looking at times becomes a black tornado, almost conlike a cross between the mask oftragedy cealed by sheer black curtains as she Mark Morris, center, and the Monnale Dance Group perform 'Dido and Aeneas' and Norma Desmond. III
By Janice Berman
IT
THE
In one scene,
Joseph Poulson
and
Grant, by far the smallest member
Luke Miller sit at a table with a heavy tome before them. They reach over
company,
austere Bijoux-a strange little girl in a pink satin dress-and the even.more aus-
each other's hands to turn its thin pages. When someone switches on a standing electric fan, the pages turn over by themselves. Kristen Hollinsworth and
tere Rondo, originally a solo for Morris. The closer for each of the small programs was the comic, ingenious, and loosely set From Old Seville, a duet for
Darrin M. Wright, sitting behind the men, rise to soft~y whisper in their ears. The pages are blowing in the wind, and it's an eerily beautiful moment. In another scene Hollinsworth is
Morris and Grant, two people in a bar who dance a flirtatious, combative sevillanas. The two were wonderful together, she small and feisty, and he moving on and around her, castanets chattering. Interpretations varied - occasionally Morris' character seemed torn, more
rigged and hoisted up so that she floats horizontally, her feet reaching back toward a ladder. Three people are helping her, or perhaps hindering her-it's hard to tell which. Poulson, who has been the active rigger off to the side in the dark, ends up climbing the rope and dangling before her as she sits atop the ladder. It's a little like Chagall's upsidedown men and women in the sky, and a little like the racy duet in Stroman's Contact. But mostly, it is like itself: one of Marshall's gemlike haikus. Each scene was delicious in its own way. The commitment and individuality of the five dancers, the sly visual riddles, and the sense of playfulness and predicament in equal quantities conspired to keep a smile upon one's lips. See www.susanmarshallandcompany.org and www.dtw.org.
MARK
MORRIS
DANCE
BROOKLYN ACADEMY MARK
MORRIS
AND
DANCE CENTER
BROOKLYN, MARCH
GROUP
OF MUSIC
8-25, 2006
REVIEWED BY AMANDA
SMITH
One of the happiest places I know is sitting in the audience of a Mark Morris performance. Never was this more true than in this 25th-anniversary season of Morris' company, which featured three weeks of dancing.
From the 133 works
Morris has made, 24 were shown, performed by 18 glorious and diverse dancers. At Morris' building, the performance space deliberately resembled the old Dance Theater Workshop, where Morris blasted onto the scene in 1983, emerging as the leading choreographer of his generation. Of the three BAM programs, the most unusual was the middle week's two
JUNE lOO(P
interested in the cigar-chomping bartender (Heginbotham)-but in the last performance, Morris entered abruptly, looking wildly for Grant, fingers spread
Amber Darragh as Dido one-act operas. The great good humor of Four Saints in Three Acts, led by Michelle Yard and John Heginbotham in a vision of a gentle, frolicking heaven, was emblematic of the season's tone. In Dido and Aeneas, we saw for the first
in anticipation. He was stalking her, his character a cousin to the vampire in One Charming Night, and at the dance's last beat, he dropped to the floor, spent or dead from his seductive efforts.
time the masterpiece without Morris, who had dominated previous produc-
and
tions with his mesmerizing, genderbending double portrayal of both Dido and her enemy, the Sorceress. Here Amber Darragh, long, elegant, and stunning, with a profile made in heaven, was the tragic Dido to Craig Biesecker's increasingly au thorita tive Aeneas. His curls flying, Bradon McDonald's scampering Sorceress conjured a brilliant cross between a fiend and an imp. Among
NY
of the
but only in height, lit up the
the
season's
sweetest
moments were the three programs, "Solos, Duets, and Trios," in the more intimate space, displaying the rarely seen smaller dances of Morris' earlier years. Seeing these works was like visiting with charming old friends. Assuming another of Morris' roles, McDonald's lilting rendition of Three Preludes was in turn frisky, melancholy, playful. Russian more
In the more mannerly Three Preludes, David Leventhal was Pierrot-like than Mikhail
Baryshnikov, the dance's original interpreter. The two together in Love, You Have Won were a subtly extraordinary pairing, Leventhal's aquiline purity playing against McDonald's intelligent sprite. Biesecker, Joe Bowie, and golden girl Julie Worden aced Pas de Poisson. Lauren DANCE
MAGAZINE
Morris' many passions include film, he curated a selection of his
favorites for the BAM cinema, running concurrently with the live performances. Not coincidentally, his recent Cargo, shown at the opera house, seemed like his version of the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Morris' hands, the loincloth-clad dancers cliscover poles to experiment with and learn the lesson of mortality. Always, for Morris, it's about the music. This season he made his conducting debut, leading 49 singers and musicians in Vivaldi's Gloria, a natural for the ebullient music-lover. If his first performance was a tad careful, by the end of the run he was swinging his hips with the music. The season closer, Going Away Party, usually done to a tape by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, was set for the first time to live music by Western Caravan. Morris also chose bands, including Ensemble,
his own MMDG Music to play in the BAM cafe. For
the final evening, in a nod to his geographic and artistic roots-as a teenager he danced with a Balkan folk dance troupe in his native Seattle-his childhood friend Mary Sherhart serenaded us with her Balkan cabaret. As Morris observed in the souvenir booklet,
"Live music ...
is in the flesh 119
and in the moment,
and it joins togeth-
er those who hear it in a way that's both ancient and inexplicable .. All art is the same, or at least all great art. I get the same thrill from a Handel oratorio or a dance by Merce Cunningham. Both show me the world, or more precisely, the manifold worlds within me and in which I live." Morris' dances show us, magnificently, the worlds in which we ourselves live. See www.mmdg.org.
YVONNE
MEIER
THE KITCHEN, NYC MARCH
16-18,2006
REVIEWED BY SUSAN YUNG
Yvonne Meier must be a shaman. somehow
left
everything-and
She noth-
ing-to chance in a delirious evening of two new works, this is not a pink pony: take 1 and 2 and Gogolorez or the mystery of the flying cow. The dancers improvised within the structure of a "score." Meier assumed the role of emcee
for much of the evening,
roam-
ing the stage with a microphone and giving commands in her Teutonic lilt. One absurd scene followed anotherthe effect was like a ringleader trying to contain the chaos of a three-ring circus.
ing and colliding. Rope-jumping ranged from basic to balletic. Aggressive child's play became analogous to the give-andtake in romantic relationships. A soundtrack (uncredited) from rock songs to Mancini-like
noir, was
punctuated
by
occasional gunfire and explosions, with bass heavy enough to shake the house. Ramirez was abducted by two mysterious, ape-suited dancers. In Gogolorez, DD Jennifer Monson, Fabio
Dorvillier, da Silva,
Jeremy Wade, Nami Yamamoto, and Miguel Gutierrez all wore ape suits (echoing the ending of pink pony), which they stripped off immediately. They picked up another dancer, Jennifer Miller, and deposited her on the laps of viewers as Meier dead-
Child's play or romance? Arturo Vidich and Marion Ramirez in pink pony
panned, "Everyone loves audience participation." A football-shaped cooler disgorged ropes (for jumping), clothes (donned), and towels (with which Meier directed the dancers to make a beautiful
Pink pony - a triangle between Osmany Tellez, Marion Ramirez, and Arturo Vidich - featured props and taskoriented movements drawn from chil-
mosaic). She threw out commands like "Use your tongue," "Make a foreign sound," "Make an incredible design with the ropes." Meier tore down the back-
dren's "work": playground games, soccer, gymnastics, and hyperactivity, including phrases of spastic limb-fling-
drop and covered the dancers with it. She cued them with "Orgy!" and they
120
writhed,
struggled to stand, and walked JUNE
2006