The lights never quite came up during the Mark Morris
Dance Group’s December performances at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music.
Toward the end of both programs–an array of dances that
included two world premières and six New York premières—one
felt deflated by the dusk, as if
sitting there in sunglasses. Was the consistently
low wattage simply a coincidence of repertory? Could it be
that Michael Chybowski, who lit all but two of the dances,
prefers gloom? Maybe the lighting was metaphorical, an
atmospheric dimming that is its own aside or shadow or
subtext.
Morris’s last engagement at BAM was a
GE-light-bulb of an idea called The Hard Nut, a TV-age take
on The Nutcracker that was nothing if not
bright—the better to see the suburban subversion onstage. This
winter’s engagement came to us in a different spirit. As
usual, there was the flurry of press previews that always
petal the path to a Morris performance in New York City.
Interviewers still like to label the choreographer Baby
Balanchine, while the gay press eagerly explicates his work
in the same way new musicologists search for queer
chords in Tchaikovsky and Schubert. But this time Morris’s
tone was one of reflection, of hubris subdued, and of faint
irritation with the fawning. He’s been making dances for
fifteen years now, and the brilliant upstart has settled into
middle-period stature.
A Morris program today, as various as its subjects
and scores may be, is a mix of
