Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP makes a triumphant debut at The Joyce with a grounded, intimate performance

• By drediman
• August 2, 2023
• No Comments

Last night, Mark Morris Dance Group made a triumphant debut at the Joyce Theater. The last time I had seen the company was a little more than a year ago at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where the troupe performed the ravishing large-scale masterpiece L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. It’s a pleasure to touch base with Morris’s dancers – many of them welcomingly familiar, some of them beguilingly new to my eyes – in an evening of more intimate pleasures, one in which they exhibited unforced eclecticism (the beautifully-curated program is the first of two during the company’s two-week residency at The Joyce).

Other than say Alexei Ratmansky, I’m hard pressed to come up with a choreographer whose aesthetic is more deeply rooted in musicality and humanity than Mark Morris (despite their working in different genres) – a sentiment fully supported by last night’s opening bill. The evening commenced with the sleek yet laid-back Numerator, a perfect mood-setter that accentuated the company’s innate yet crisp musicality. Then came A Wooden Tree, a more unconventional work that’s set to a mash-up of folk music and spoken word, which tapped into the dancers’ authentic sense of self, human relationships, and community. The benefit of dancing in a smaller space like The Joyce is that it gives dance fans an opportunity to optimally appreciate more subtle works like this one.

After the intermission, the program picked up with Italian Concerto, a wonderfully accessible piece of dance for five dancers that once again showcased the dancers grounded and unmatched sense of musicality. The evening concluded with Grand Duo, a rousing ensemble work that more fully showed off the dancers’ technical prowess, in addition to the qualities mentioned thus far. Suffice to say, it made for a fitting end to a truly fine night of dance. With the exception of A Wooden Tree (which used a recording), superb live accompaniment was provided by a small but sensational team of musicians (Colin Fowler on piano, Nicholas Tavani on violin, and David Stevens on percussion) over the course of the evening.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP
Dance
The Joyce Theater
Approximately 2 hours (with one intermission)
Through August 12