Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Mark Morris Dance Group soulfully closes out Mostly Mozart 2018 with a trio of dances

• By drediman
• August 22, 2018
• No Comments

Mark Morris Dance Group closes out Mostly Mozart Festival 2018 with a triple bill at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Last week, this year’s edition of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival came to a close with a short run – I attended Sunday afternoon’s final performance – of a bill comprised of a trio of dances from Mark Morris Dance Group. The program included the 1989 “Love Song Waltzes” (danced to a score by Brahms), the 1996 “I Don’t Want to Love” (performed to Monteverdi’s music), and the premiere of “The Trout” (set to a Schubert piano quintet). The soulful multi-disciplinary works – these hybrid creations (Mr. Morris’s unique blend of dance, theater, and live music) are typical of MMDG – befitted the marked increased in diversity at this summer’s festival. Indeed, I have a feeling that this year’s Mostly Mozart Festival has absorbed some of the programming originally intended for the now-defunct Lincoln Center Festival.

Run-of-the-mill Mark Morris is still great dance theater, and generally that was my takeaway from this offering. Although each dance was thoughtfully constructed and beautifully performed – I would expect nothing less from Mr. Morris and his dancers – there was a certain sameness that slowly crept in when seeing these pieces performed back-to-back-to-back; a small case of diminishing returns.  Nevertheless, Mr. Morris remains unrivaled in his uncanny ability to raise a mirror to his audiences. If you’ve never seen a MMDG piece before (run, don’t walk, to buy tickets to his transcendent signature evening length work “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato”, set to music by Handel, when it’s next staged in New York), you owe it to yourself to do so and be moved by the humanity – it’s all there: joy, sorrow, triviality, profundity, community, loneliness – this legendary and iconic choreographer is able to portray onstage through sheer movement and gestures.

Indeed, even after having experienced MMDG a number of times, I still relish any chance to see the company – which is made of extraordinarily musical dancers (true artists themselves) who understand the inherent theater in movement – perform. This time around, I cherished the women’s distinctive dancing more than the men’s; I was moved by the transparency of their souls laid bare on the stage of the Rose Theater (at Jazz at Lincoln Center). Additionally, the live music-making by MMDG Music Ensemble, here manifested through a superb chamber orchestra and a group of vocalists, was ravishing in and of itself.

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MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP
Dance / Classical Music
Mostly Mozart Festival at the Rose Theater (Jazz at Lincoln Center)
1 hour, 50 minutes (with one intermission)
Closed