Mark Morris Does Opera and Schumann

We went to BAM to hear and see the Mark Morris Dance Company perform what was billed as an evening of opera.   The first piece was a performance of Britten's "Curlew River".  It was performed as an opera, with no dancers, but it was directed and choreographed by Morris.  "Curlew River" is really a chamber opera; for seven instrumentalists on stage and a cast of male singers and an all male choir.   It was inspired by Britten's encounter with Noh theatre on a trip to Japan, and contains many elements of Noh, as well as things like Gregorian chant, etc.   It is really quite austere and spartan, especially in the use of instrumental resources.   The directing and singing were excellent, but there was one major problem: you could not understand the words.  Sung in English, the singers had little sense of diction.   Normally these days, one gets supertitles, so that it doesn't matter, but, in this case there were none.   The program helpfully printed the entire libretto, but then the house lights were turned all the way down so there was no hope of reading it.   This problem certainly diminished the effectiveness of the performance, and, perhaps in a smaller house than BAM's opera house, the diction might have been clearer.  But the direction was superb; Morris and choreographed the movements of the musicians in a way which added a great deal to the performance.

The second half of the program was a performance of Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas".  The orchestra and singers were in the pit, and the dancers had the stage to themselves.   Morris himself conducted.   It was an astonishing performance.   The piece dates from 1989, when Morris was in Brussels.   What is striking when you first experience the piece is that you are getting two strands of narrative at once.   There is an onstage dancer for each vocal soloist, and a larger group of dancers which embodies the choir.  So the movement literally follows the musical structure and meaning.  So when the Sorceress sings about doing nasty things, the dancer "dances" doing nasty things.   This is fairly normal practice for Morris, and sometimes verges on cliches.   But at the same time, once you enter this realm, astonishing things begin to happen.   First of all, the movement is anything but "baroque"; it is very angular, modern, and energetic and even outlandish or transgressive at times.   I was reminded of both Merce Cunningham and Pina Bausch at various times in the way the movement incorporates very stylized versions of routine, pedestrian gestures.   At times, I felt Morris was doing everything he could to contradict the style of the baroque music; there are moments of pure slapstick that made the audience burst into laughter.   At the same time, this opera is a tragedy.  To my eyes and ears, this was an unsettling juxtaposition.   Which is good.    Morris also makes point of being indifferent to the gender of his dancers.   The parts of Dido the Queen and the Sorceress were danced by the same woman in this performance, but in the original production, the same parts were danced by Morris himself. You can see excerpts on YouTube.  
The musical performances, with an excellent period orchestra, were excellent.   The singers were good, though again there was very little in the way of understanding the words that were sung.   I should also mention that the soloists were singing nicely in the now normal baroque style, except for Stephanie Blythe.   Blythe is normally featured in Wagnerian roles, and her voice has a full, auditorium-filling heft and presence.   It was thrilling when she belted out Dido's Lament at full volume, although to my ears it jarred with the stylistic norms of the rest of the ensemble.   But maybe that was part of Morris's intentions.

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A week later we went to hear another Mark Morris work "V", set to Schumann's Piano Quintet and performed by the Juilliard students at their annual repertory show.   It was again extraordinary.   The piece was created in 2001, and performed by 14 dancers, with (as always) a live performance of the music.  It is very difficult to describe how Morris works with the music; he is certainly heir to the Balachine tradition of creating ballets which are only about the music and the dance, but Morris does something quite different from Balachine.   With Balanchine, I always get a sense of a dialog, or counterpoint between the music and the dance. There are two independent lines which interact.  Morris, on the surface, seems to be almost literally illustrating the music.   Dance movements closely correspond with musical counterparts, and when a theme in the music returns, so does the movement associated with it.   But at a certain point, I get beyond the point of thinking about it that way, and the dance and music merge into one single thing.   And then you also begin to appreciate exactly what kinds of movements Morris has chosen, and sometimes they are very striking.   The slow march of the second movement, for example, is done with the dancers on all fours, moving irregularly across the stage. It was both totally unexpected and totally right; I may never be able to hear that movement again without visualizing that movement.  And the last movement is pure joy, both witty and exultant.   I can't wait until my next chance to hear and see it.   Mark Morris really deserves the overused term "genius".   His next premiere is in Liverpool, in a festival to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper, with a score based on Sgt. Pepper composed by the Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson. I can't imagine what that will be!

And, by the way, the Juilliard students, both musicians and dancers, were great.