[DANCE]
THE INSTALLATION IS MEANT TO BE “MY OWN RED-LIGHT DISTRICT WITHOUT ANY FILTH.”
MUSIC MAN {BY STEVE SUCATO}
INFO@ PGHCITYPAPER.COM
MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP 8 p.m. Sat., May 4, Byham Theater, 101 Sixth St., Downtown. $19-48. 412-456-6666 or trustarts.org N E W S
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[ART REVIEW]
Mark Morris Dance Group in “Petrichor” {PHOTO COURTESY OF BRIAN SNYDER}
I first met celebrated choreographer Mark Morris in 2002, on a tour of his state-ofthe-art Brooklyn, N.Y. Dance Center with a dozen fellow dance critics. As we were being led into the main studio where Morris was rehearsing his Mark Morris Dance Group, he stopped us and sternly directed us to take our shoes off and quietly seat ourselves along one wall of the studio. It was my introduction into the temperamental genius’ controlling nature, just one aspect of a complicated personality. In public, Morris can be funny and charming as well as irritable and opinionated. Morris, 57, generally bars outsiders from his creative process and has been known to withdraw permission to perform his works from companies he feels no longer do them justice. He’s managed to wield his intense personality to become one of the most influential and important choreographers in dance history. His more than 130 works — for his company, the world’s leading ballet companies and for the opera — are known for their accessibility, cleverness and musicality. Morris, who while growing up studied both music and dance, is unique among choreographers in that he prefers to choreograph from a musical score and insists upon the use of live music in his works. It’s a practice his company — which includes both dancers and musicians — has adhered to in the studio and on tour since 1996. “Music is my interest and the reason that I choreograph,” says Morris, speaking by phone from his New York apartment. “My musicians are as much a part of my company as the dancers are. It’s a unity.” Morris and company return to the Byham Theater on May 4 to close out the Pittsburgh Dance Council’s season with three of his works, including 2010’s “The Muir,” set to Beethoven arrangements of a collection of Irish and Scottish folk songs. Says Morris: “There is a narrative text, so the words you are hearing reflect what the dancers are doing.” Also on the program are “Petrichor” (2010), a work for eight women set to music by Heitor Villa-Lobos, and the aptly titled “Festival Dance” (2011), a Bohemian folk dance with music by Johann Nepomuk Hummel. “It’s a good show,” says Morris. “And live music is always worth it.”
PEEP SHOW {BY DAVID BERGER}
Dissolving the physical: An image from Adult Arcade, an installation by Marc Burgess
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N THE CURRENT exhibit at 707 Penn
Gallery, Adult Arcade, viewers must overcome their disorientation and reflect upon how their presence is part of, but also separate from, the artist’s conception of a space. According to Marc Burgess, the individual “create[s] a personalized atmosphere depending on where [he] chooses to walk throughout the space.” The storefront-sized space is a darkened room closed off by black drapes, enlivened by sensor-tripped red lights, textured wall paintings, ambient music and minimalistic sculpture. Burgess, the energetic force behind Adult Arcade, is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a jack of all trades, and a foreman at Wood Street Galleries. In an email interview with CP, Burgess said that he spent a year thinking about manipulating the various elements in the exhibit, intrigued by forces of scale and perspective that he found in the work
of Dali and Escher. His idea finally arrived after contemplating an old porn-shop sign with flashing bulbs, which carried the rubric “Adult Arcade.” The installation evokes complex and multiple associations, thoughts and moods, but also gives us a glimpse of the inner world of the artist. He grew up in
ADULT ARCADE continues through May 17. 707 Penn Gallery, 707 Penn Ave., Downtown. www.trustarts.org
the ’80s, during the ascent of robotics and “lasers all over the place — in sci-fi movies, dance clubs, factories, even your local supermarket,” he writes. The installation is meant to be “my own red-light district without any filth.” As the artist Sol LeWitt said, “Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously
simple.” So it is with this installation. However, it takes some time to orient yourself to the surroundings. Light sensors on the floor and ceiling are activated by movement, but the lights stay on for only two or three seconds. It is also difficult to ascertain when or where one’s movement will be detected. The sensors activate pairs of red spotlights that are aimed at groups of textured paintings on the wall. These 3-by-3-foot white-and-black paintings are arranged in groups of two to five canvases. The surfaces, made up of joint compound, are worked up by forks or other implements to create reliefs and patterns sometimes resembling railroad ties or topographical maps. Ribbons of black arranged by one-point perspective meander and loop through paintings that have great plains of oceanic whiteness. In some cases, the black marks remind one of rivulets of water or lakes and valleys seen from a great distance above. CONTINUES ON PG. 40
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