The Fredösphere

On Saturday we saw Mark Morris' dancers perform because Terry Teachout said we had to.  When V, the last dance on the program, was about to start, I turned to the wifeösphere and said, "this is the dance that Terry Teachout says will save civilization."

People say Mark Morris is a classicist.  What struck me about his dances is how musical they are.  Indeed, dance is aligned with music in ways that go beyond the mere fact that music usually accompanies it.  The forms, gestures, and idioms of music typically find close analogs with those in dance.  Think of homophony and polyphony, solo, melody and accompaniment, call and response, strict canon.  (One of Morris' dances included a double fugue of bodily movement.)  Consider forms:  you could watch a dance that had no musical accompaniment at all, yet you could clearly recognize its forma as a rondo, or theme and variations, or even a sonata.

During the final applause, the master himself came out to bow and goof around.  He had an odd scarf over his shoulders which reminded me of the time the Ann Arbor Cantata Singers were hired to sing Vivaldi for his dancers.  During the rehearsal he had -- well, I'll be charitable and call it a shawl, although "ratty old kitchen curtain" might be more accurate -- a shawl draped around his shoulders.  Since it was frigid inside the theater, I assumed Morris was improvising to avoid catching a cold.  Now I see it was an affectation, or an ironic comment on affectations.  (Or on choreographers, or maybe on people who make fun of choreographers.  Or on the garment industry.  Or on Man's Inhumanity to Man.  Or something.)  Obviously we are talking here about someone who counts public opinion for nothing.

Anyway, Terry was right about V, and we had a blast.  Oh, and that one ending, where the four dancers swept past each other like planetary bodies -- was that Rock of Ages?  (Yes.) -- knocked me on my butt.  Great stuff.